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Dissociative Identity Disorder Self-Help If you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, you most likely have above average intelligence and have heroically pushed through great pain to achieve what you have. So please do not misunderstand my passion for you to enjoy the peace, wholeness and fulfillment that is rightfully yours, as implying I think you have not done your utmost. On the contrary, I write because I expect that you have not had the secret of healing adequately explained to you, and it is because I deeply understand how difficult it is to accept one’s alters that in this webpage I have gone to extremes in striving to motivate you to do the awkward thing that will bring you healing. Alters are formed by a desire to bury reality, rather than face it, and it did, in fact, provide some temporary relief. It is not surprising, then, that trying to live in denial of reality often becomes a way of life for people with multiple personalities, and that they typically seek to hide from their consciousness the fact that they have alters. If you have alters that you are trying to suppress, however, your continuing inner pain is bitter proof that denial simply prolongs one’s torment. Rather than being afraid of what secrets your alters could carry, what you should really fear is the unavoidable reality that ignoring or suppressing alters will ruin your life. Living in denial might have become an habitual, though ineffective, way of coping with highly unpleasant things, but this is just one of many factors prodding anyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder to despise and/or reject their alters. If you have alters that have not yet begun to heal, they are likely to be a severe embarrassment to you. They probably cause you to worry that you might be insane, and to worry that if your friends and people important to you found out, they would reject you, or look down on you, or perhaps even treat you as demon possessed. It would be rare for one alter to have all of the unpleasant qualities I am about to mention, but it is not uncommon for newly surfaced alters to have some of the following characteristics. I compile this list not to insult alters, but to assure you that you are not alone in your struggles. You will see that I fully understand your every reason for wanting to suppress an alter. It is with my eyes wide open that I insist that befriending your every alter will enrich your life beyond your fondest hopes. Frequently, people’s alters say hurtful things to me and yet I soon win them over. In just a few days these alters have transformed from obnoxious to adorable. Your alters kindly, too, will quickly undergo this almost miraculous transformation, once you start treating them kindly. Alters are very keen to please anyone who offers them unconditional love. Newly surfaced alters are likely to be filled with anger. This is a normal human reaction to suffering severe inner pain and injustice, especially for people who have had it beaten into them – or otherwise emphasized – that it is unacceptable to express pain by crying. Alters’ expression of intense emotion and frustration in the form of anger could seem like hate. It could be directed at you, or other alters. They might even beat up some of your other alters – especially younger ones – or terrify them simply by their fury. They could hate your loved ones, such as your marriage partner or your children. Initially, alters are likely to hate God and/or be terrified of him. Most were formed at a time in your life before you came to Christ, and be embittered toward God because of what they suffered and/or be riddled with real or false guilt, causing them to expect God to be furious with them, since they have not yet discovered how gentle and forgiving God is. They could like immoral behavior or addictions that flood you with shame, and they could bring with them strong temptation that could even threaten your marriage or job. They can bring ugly memories and fears that you never wanted, along with flashbacks, nightmares and body memories. Their intense feelings, such as deep anguish, confusion and ungodly cravings are likely to overwhelm your own feelings. They might be in such agony and despair that they are desperate to kill themselves. They could instigate serious suicide attempts which, whether they realize it or not, would mean killing you. They might be embarrassingly stupid. Some might think they are non-human – perhaps an alien, stuffed toy, animal or demon. Some might think they are the opposite sex. They might recoil from making love to your marriage partner or seek marital relations when you don’t want it. Their taste in clothes, hairstyle, music, entertainment, and so on could be frustratingly different to yours. Even their taste in friends might be disturbingly different. Young alters might want/need things that highly embarrass adults, such as diapers, a pacifier, a doll or teddy bear. They might cry, or suck their thumb. They might squander your money, overdraw your bank account, or deliberately lose your keys, your wedding ring or vital documents. They might regularly stay awake all night, ruining your sleep. When they are active they could leave you feeling numb, feeling physically smaller than you really are and/or cause you to feel you are viewing the world through a glass wall. They could get you lost when driving and/or leave you unable to perform tasks that at other times you could easily do. Believe it or not, all the undesirable behaviors I’ve listed are the very reasons why it is essential for you to befriend and love your alters. Everything you dislike about your alters exists because they feel unloved, ignored or rejected and/or you have not taken the time to explain things to them and to entice them to get to know Jesus, their healer. So to ignore or suppress or resent them is a sure way to perpetuate your distress. Not loving your alters is like being dangerously malnourished and, instead of feeding yourself, hating your stomach for making you feel uncomfortable. As a starving stomach needs food and will give you peace and serve you well when you feed it, so a nasty alter is love-starved and will bless you immensely when you feed that alter the love he/she desperately needs. You cannot claim to be godly unless you act like God. So please see your alters through the eyes of the One who willingly let himself be tortured to death for them. He sees them as being lovable and of infinite value. Even if they have not yet come to Christ, he sees the end from the beginning. Through his rose-colored – or rather, blood-colored – glasses, he sees your alters as pure, holy and innocent. If his love-filled judgment differs from ours, we must remember that he is Truth and it is his assessment that for all eternity will be proved right. What if you despised your abuser and/or parent for having treated you badly when you were a child, and now that you are an adult you treat badly a little child who is just like you were? That is what you do when you despise your alter, and keep him/her in solitary confinement, imprisoned in the dark year after year. By doing this, you become, in your heart, a child abuser. What if someone were sacrificially bearing  your  pain year, after year, after year, after year, so that you could be free from that pain, and rather than you being grateful for his amazing act of love, you despised him? And what if you had the power to end this person’s pain so that neither he nor you had to suffer that pain and, instead, you not only refused to reduce his suffering but increased his pain? How heartless could anyone get? For your sake, all of your alters have been reeling in pain, and for years it has all been needless. Needless? Yes, it would have been avoided if someone had explained to you that all the things you don’t like about a particular alter of yours exist only because you have neglected him/her. If any of your alters seem dumb, it is because you have kept them ignorant by suppressing them and refusing to interact with them. If any of your alters don’t act in the godly way you would like, it is because you have let yourself develop spiritually, but by suppressing your alters have denied them that knowledge. If they are reeling in pain, it is for such reasons as you not having helped them find Christ the Healer, not explaining to them things that you as an adult know that would ease their pain (such as the simple fact that their abuser is no longer around), forcing them to continue to suffer the pain of icy isolation and rejection because you have refused to accept them, and so on. If you think of your alter as your enemy, ponder this puzzle: how could you eliminate an enemy that you are inseparably fused to, and when any pain you inflict on him ends up hurting you? The best way of getting rid of  any  enemy is to turn him into a friend. How much more so when that “enemy” permanently lives inside you! Now is the time to practice all that the Bible teaches about how to treat an enemy: Hebrews 12:14  Make every effort to live in peace with all men . . . Romans 12:18  If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. James 3:17-18  But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere. Peacemakers who sow in peace raise a harvest of righteousness. Romans 12:17-19,21  Do not repay anyone evil for evil. . . . If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge . . . Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Galatians 6:10  Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people . . . 1 Thessalonians 5:15  Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else. 1 Peter 3:9  Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult, but with blessing, because to this you were called so that you may inherit a blessing. Luke 6:27-31,33,35  . . . Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you. . . . And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ do that. . . . But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Let me adapt something I’ve written elsewhere: Proverbs 25:21-22  If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the LORD will reward you. It seems so out of place to bring wrath or vengeance into an exhortation to love that Bible scholars struggle with this interpretation. They typically opt for the reference to burning coals to mean that our kindness will fill our enemy with “burning shame.” Renowned theologian, Charles Hodge wrote, “To heap fires of coal on anyone is a punishment which no one can bear; he must yield to it. Kindness is no less effectual; the most malignant enemy cannot always withstand it.” This is true. It would seem almost impossible not to eventually win an enemy over by continued kindness. Here’s a fascinating reference to burning coals: Isaiah 6:5-7  “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.” Then one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” A burning coal to the lips would normally have tortured a person. Instead, Isaiah being cut to the core over his sinfulness allowed that coal to sanctify and transform him. Likewise, if your enemies repent, the coals your kindness heaps on their head will burn off their defilement, transforming them into godly people filled with “burning shame” over what they did to you.   If you are a host, there is a very real sense in which alters are your children. They are not half yours – bearing half your genes, as in the case with other parents, who nevertheless call their children their own flesh and blood. No, alters are your children who are not half yours; they are totally yours. For them, you do not share parental responsibility with a marriage partner; they are totally dependent upon you for love, nurturing, training and protection. Likewise, if you are an alter, your fellow alters are more than your sisters or brothers. They, too, bear all of your genes and have even helped bear your pain in a way that no sister or brother could ever do. And their destiny is your destiny. If anyone knows the importance of being loved, befriended, listened to, believed, praised, encouraged, protected, and so on, it is you. You have alters because you were denied these things. These parts of you are still reeling in pain because they have been starved of these things – the very things you are capable of giving them. In other webpages I tell of an alter who was miraculously given a special baby doll that the alter treats as a real baby. She is determined to be the best possible mother to this doll and give her the perfect upbringing that she was denied. God gave her this doll because although all that love and nurturing will not help the doll, it will be very healing to the alter giving that love. This is partly because of the principle that it is through giving that we receive. You have something far more precious than a doll to pour out your love upon. You have real alters to love. If someone can benefit from loving a doll, you will doubly benefit by loving your alters, because they are part of you. Someone’s little alter wrote the following to one of L’s young alters. The alter who wrote is used to calling her host “Mama,” so it was natural for her to refer to L as Mama L. I bet you want Mama L to hold you and tell you how pretty you are. Am I right? Mama L is hurting right now, but I will try and tell her that you are a little girl and you need her help. No one should walk past a hurting child and not help. I know L is kind. She loves you. L’s young alter replied: Yes, I would like it very much if Mama L could hold me. I would like that so very much. My Mama never held me in the right way. I need a Mama’s love. Thank you for sharing a hug. I needed one today. You might complain that you are handicapped in loving your alters because you have not had a good parenting role model, but you know what you craved as child – unconditional love, respect, dignity, approval, being listened to, hugged, believed, to have some basic toys, have fun, be safe and protected. An alter I dearly love wrote the following for hosts, in the hope that it would open their eyes: Behind an alter’s pain and bitterness is the real alter: sweet, precious and beautiful, with a warm and sensitive heart. Your alters are like a rosebuds. Until they slowly open, they hide exquisite scent and beauty. They are gorgeous flowers, opening their souls in the most precious of ways. God has given them to you as gift for your healing. When a bud first opens, it is for its own survival, but then when it opens wide it calls out to butterflies and to all around to enjoy its sweetness and beauty and escape from the surrounding drabness. We alters seek to help the host, no matter how dazed, confused or angry we may be. We are in agony, carrying this hidden pain for you, our hosts. Without us, you’d die, but for you we’ve struggled on; unthanked, unvalued, uncared for, year after year. As much as we long to be tough, we are as delicate as flowers. We are exhausted and need this crushing load of pain lifted or we will die, and you can’t have us do that because for us to end our pain by killing ourselves would literally kill you. We are sorry for being unable to tolerate the pain any longer and at the worst times emerging from the darkness we had been banished to. But is there ever a good time to come out? Is there ever a time that you would welcome us and proudly celebrate our selfless heroism in bearing your pain? We are sorry we make you remember things you want to forget. We have been imprisoned in lonely darkness with these tormenting memories as our only companions. We are trapped in a time that has long since passed, with the real pain ever present, filling us with icy shame and shattering our self-esteem. Most of the time we would rather die than dump this on you. We have had no contact with the outside world and no opportunity to grow and change and relieve ourselves of our pain – the pain we bear for you. We know nothing but the secrets that we have been hiding from you so that you can live. Finding ourselves unable to contain it any longer, we burst out with the explosive of whatever emotion we have had to bear year after year, be it anger, shame, pain, or confusion. Dear hosts, on behalf of all alters, I tell you, I am sorry. We’d do better if we could, and if we knew how. But we’ve exhausted our resources. We’ve done all we know. We tried so hard and so long to help you but now we need your help. You have what is needed to rid both you and us of pain. We are parts of you that you need. We have gifts from God that can enable to you be whole, and we love you. We are not enemies. If your foot is hurting, that doesn’t make the foot an enemy. The sensible thing is to do what it takes to heal. Please help us heal so that together we can enjoy the fulfillment of achieving great things for the glory to God. A dear friend with Dissociative Identity Disorder writes: At the beginning of my healing journey, when I did not know I had alters, I gave Jesus permission to enter into the darkest rooms of my heart, open the doors and let the light of grace shine in. Very soon after that, God appeared to me, called one of my alters to him, and just loved on him. Having no understanding of alters, I could not believe what I witnessed. I thought I was a freak. After some research on the web I came to realize that I had Dissociative Identity Disorder, but that did not stop me from getting so angry and mad at my alters. Many a time, I would abuse both them and myself. I would deny that I had them. Often when I experienced weird things I would cry out to Jesus asking, “What is wrong with me, Lord?” Each time, he would gently reply, “You have alters.” Early in my healing journey I thought all I needed was more commitment, prayer and Bible study. I devoted myself to this and could not understand why I was not getting better. After much frustration, I eventually discovered that me growing spiritually was only of limited value if I kept my alters ignorant of even elementary spiritual understanding. Far more was achieved by me teaching my alters the simple spiritual truths they did not know, than teaching myself deeper truths. People speak of the difference between head knowledge and heart knowledge. This is very close to the difference between spiritually feeding myself and spiritually feeding my alters. And I could only spiritually guide my alters after first befriending them and winning their love and trust. Even though parts of me often went into denial, God would keep calling the alters out to talk to them. Sometimes, when I would start to hurt them, Jesus would come and place his hand so gently on mine and say that I needed to love them as he has loved them. He showed me how, by the way he loved them. I regularly e-mailed Grantley and he also kept reiterating the importance of befriending my alters, treating them respectfully and ever so gently, and letting them express themselves. In fact, he and God had to keep repeating it month after month until it turned into years. It dawned on me that in abusing my alters, and getting mad at them, or denying my baby alters diapers, and other baby comforts, I was abusing a child. That made me flinch, just as I am sure it would for you, too. The children that are part of you – your alters – are alone and hurting so deeply. Would you beat a child that you see on the street, just because someone else treated it that way? I had to see my alters as Jesus saw them and treat them as he did. I have not always been successful it loving my alters but Grantley has often reminded me of Micah 7:8, “Do not gloat over me, my enemy! Though I have fallen, I will rise.” I just keep getting up. As more of the alters come to levels of healing, it is easier to stand, or get up quicker. Sometimes, even now, when my alters talk I go to butt in (or stop them) and I see Jesus standing on my left side with his hand on my shoulder telling me to let them talk and assuring me that it is okay, even when they say things I don’t want to hear or that embarrass me. Expecting only to get rejection, I kept my alters suppressed, even from me. I kept them in the dark and it caused me harm, and them also. Suppose some sweet, dear, hurting children are locked away in the dark; cold and scared. You are close to the door. Would you let them out? Yes, they are unkempt, and need a bath. After all, no one attended to them and they could not do it themselves for they could not see in the dark. When you open the door, will you be gentle with them and help them? Christian with Dissociative Identity Disorder, you have a good heart, filled with grace and love, so I know you would open the door and help those children. The children (and some that are older) that have been locked in your heart are crying in the dark. Jesus hears and weeps for them. His arms are craving to hold them. No one has the key but you. Will you leave them in the dark, or let them out? You are strong and the word of God abides in you. You can run life’s race and win. You know the pain athletes endure to break a record that will not last. In life’s race you endure discomfort to win a prize that will last forever. Please put down the whip – the words and behavior handed to you by your abusers. You were brainwashed. Break free from the lies and realize that you and your alters are made for honor, and pure, tender love. You have great value – every part of you. If I could, I would give all your alters a tender hug. Can you hug them for me? Jesus asks you, “Will you also hug them from me?” He loves alters, and he loves you purely and tenderly, with a heart of compassion. Will you forgive yourself for having Dissociative Identity Disorder? In reality there is nothing to forgive, but you are probably angry, not only at your abusers and at the alters, who are part of you, but with yourself. You may believe you split because you were not strong enough. In actuality, you were stronger than most, and more intelligent, and you split so that you could endure a situation in which you had no support or alternative. But that time has ended. Now is the time to heal, and that depends upon you loving your alters. I am truly sorry for all the pain that you have endured. This is your time for healing. Ask your alters to help you. They might resist at first but I believe you will end up surprised at the result. They crave your love and once they know they have it, they will do almost anything to please you. If, after reading all of this, you still refuse to do the proper, godly thing, which is to love your alters, at least let Jesus and other people love them. How can you do that? The simplest way is by what I call anonymous group therapy. Use a free e-mail account that does not identify you and encourage your alters to vent by e-mailing Christians who understand because they themselves have Dissociative Identity Disorder and are committed to loving alters unconditionally, no matter how obnoxious and anti-God the alters are. Their love will soon melt your alters’ hearts and if those in the group do their job properly they will entice your alters to dialog with Jesus and in him your alters will encounter the transforming power of infinite love, patience, wisdom and healing. To not let your alters show their ugly side to these people would be as senseless as having serious gaping wounds and refusing to let medics see and treat those wounds because they look ugly.

Christian Insights into Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personalities) Superficially, ‘sending Alters to God’ seems ideal. After all, God is the healer. He understands our needs better than anyone else and knows us ever better than we know ourselves. He is safe, good, kind, warm, gentle, patient and understanding and the best friend anyone could ever have. Nevertheless, I worry about what some therapists might have in mind when they speak of ‘sending Alters to God or heaven’. My information is too vague for me to be critical and I have little doubt that everyone doing this has the highest motives. However, the practice could possibly be considerably less desirable than it initially seems; depending on what is actually happening and how it is perceived by the person experiencing it. My guess is that some people might speak of ‘sending alters to God’ to describe something genuinely helpful, whereas others might apply the term to a quick ‘fix’ that brings a degree of relief but ends up significantly hindering healing. Occasionally, people with a correct understanding and attitude train others who train still others and, somewhere along the line, one of them ends up doing things he/she believes are identical to the original trainer but something critical has been lost. So what people mean by ‘sending alters to God’ could vary from counselor to counselor. Their methods could also differ. Some might do it in a very gentle, reassuring way, whereas others might do it a way that is almost as traumatic and damaging as trying to exorcise an alter as one would a demon. Moreover, even if an identical method is used, how alters interpret attempts to do this is likely to vary from alter to alter. Just as some alters mistakenly perceive talk of integration as an attempt to cause them to cease to exist, some alters could see attempts to ‘send them to God/Heaven’ as killing them. Since God/Jesus is the ultimate healer and counselor, it is critically important to encourage alters to dialog with him and end up making him their best friend. I presume, however, that the expression sending alters to him means something that goes beyond this. Ideally – to use the terminology of one of my friends who has D.I.D. – people with Dissociative Identity Disorder should make Jesus an honorary alter. He should be invited to be continually present inside; relating to alters just as other alters relate to each other. If so, no alter needs to be ‘sent’ anywhere to relate to God. If alters are treated as rejects (or even if they mistakenly conclude that this is how they are being treated) it will further damage their self-esteem, which has already been deeply battered by abusers. Additionally, because abusers have often directly or indirectly taught alters that God wants them to be abused, many alters are terrified of God. Imagine, after having known horrific abuse, believing someone is about to send you to an omnipotent abuser. For such alters, this adds a significant level of trauma to ‘sending alters to God.’ In theory, of course, ‘sending alters to God’ is ideal. Our loving Lord obviously knows what is best, and he will return alters to the person at the perfect time. There is a serious complication, however. The good Lord knows it would be unacceptable for an alter to be returned to a hostile situation – one where the person despises the alter. Each unhealed alter has not only unshared memories but has exclusive access to part of the person’s intellectual and emotional capacity. This includes not only memories but abilities. Losing contact with alters means losing contact with significant parts of one’s brain and this will keep people from reaching their full potential. Whereas Jesus’ parable of the talents is proof of how much God wants us to develop our abilities, to isolate alters is to do the exact opposite. Moreover, if by ‘sending alters to God’ a counselor/therapist deliberately or inadvertently leaves the person with the impression that alters are just a nuisance that the person would be better off not having, he/she is likely to develop a hostile attitude toward alters. If so, it would force God to stop the healing process, i.e. to stop the alter from returning because, rather than facilitate healing, returning would only further traumatize the alter. Healing is not solely up to God. A person’s willingness to heal by lovingly accepting the alter is a critical aspect of healing. A woman gave what seemed a beautiful inner healing testimony. I was particularly interested because someone had given me a vague hint that ‘sending alters to God’ might have been involved. The woman said that she could still recall what had previously been deeply distressing memories but the memories no longer upset her like they used to. Genuine healing is like that; it is not the removal of memories (which would then render all the previous suffering little more than a useless waste) but it is the healing of memories so that they no longer bring distress. As I thought more about the testimony, however, I realized that I don’t know nearly enough about her therapy to know what was involved, but it could possibly have involved losing contact with what is sometimes called a feeler alter – an alter who carries memories of the emotional impact of certain past traumas. The loss of such an alter might seem desirable to people desperate for quick relief. It is like the amputation of an injured limb in that it might end some temporary problems but it means an on-going loss of wholeness. Feeler alters are not useless. God did not make a mistake when he gave us emotions. Emotions are a significant part of our humanity. They are so important that they are something we share with God himself, and distinguishes us from lower lifeforms. The more we lose the ability to connect with our emotions, the more robotic and less human we feel, and the more we are robbed of passion, and other desirable things. Feeler alters need and deserve not to be banished, but to be healed of their fear, anger, inner pain, and so on, so that they can feel peace, joy, love and so on, and bring these blessings to other parts of the person. Alters surface because they need healing. This surfacing is the mind rebelling against suppressing issues that desperately need resolving. It is making possible the soothing of wounds that desperately need attention. Each time a person becomes aware of a new alter, it is a significant step forward in the healing journey and something to rejoice in, despite the initially unpleasant feelings associated with it. To again lose contact with any such alter is counterproductive. Since alters who have not had the chance to heal are in deep need, they will have issues and strong feelings that are unpleasant, one’s first instinct is to want the distress to disappear by suppressing or getting rid of the alters. That, however, just ends up continuing their pain. Losing access to alters is not only not healing a person; it is perpetuating the horror of the fragmenting of the person’s heart and mind. It, therefore, is continuing to keep the person harmed by a significant portion of the damage inflicted by the abuser. On the other hand, especially when a person is too distressed to adequately care for many needy alters, sending alters to God so that they are looked after exclusively by him, can be a helpful step in the healing journey, even though it is by no means the full journey. As explained, each alter is unique and a vital part of your intellectual capacity. Each one is needed for you to reach your full potential. So alters who are with God must not be forgotten. You need them back again as soon as you are able to help them adjust to living on Twenty-First Century earth. God, however is eager to take alters into his temporary, intensely personal care, if the person is not yet strong enough to do it himself/herself. It is not unusual for the alters of Christians to enjoy times in heaven, playing with God or receiving personal instruction or comfort from him. One child alter often played before the throne of God with several other, unrelated child alters, some of whom spoke languages that were foreign to her. One of their favorite games was playing with what seemed to be a harmless ball of fire. An alter I know once found herself in what seemed like a pleasant and private heavenly hospital ward in which Jesus sat on her bed and personally comforted her. Not surprisingly, such experiences are deeply healing. Encourage alters to feel loved of God and safe with him and to spend much time with him. Wrote one alter in a written prayer: We hide in you. You have a secret place for alters and we know it is a safe place. . . . Daddy, thank you for loving and protecting alters. We would be in deep trouble without you, but we are with you and you love us. It is not uncommon for a host to feel overwhelmed by the incessant demands of several needy alters. Such a person is able to enjoy respite by handing one or more of the alters over to God for a while. With the help of her host, one of Alice’s younger alters wrote the following to one of Jake’s younger alters about the games God plays with her. Do not regard these games as trivial. Remembering that God never allows contact with himself to become sexual, imagine how healing and bonding to God, such experiences would be to a traumatized little girl who had never previously been allowed safe play, and for whom touch was usually painful, sexual, or both. God plays lots of games. My favorite is “Tickles”. I love it when he grabs me and spins me around, smiling and laughing. Then he gently tickles me and kisses my tummy. I squeal in delight. He dances with me too. I love to spin around in his arms and I feel so safe. We sing a lot together. I love to sing. We play hide and seek. He pretends he doesn’t see me and I pounce into his lap. Then he grabs me and cuddles with me. Or I call him and he surprises me with where he is. Sometimes he is behind me and that isn’t fair ’cos I don’t have eyes in the back of my head. He clowns around and we giggle and giggle. On another occasion, Alice typed as God spoke to her little alter. Here’s part of what he said: Sweetie, you are my delight. I love alters. They are special people with special needs. When the world shuts them up I have a place in my heart for them. I love you and the times we play together are more than precious to me. The Lord is far better at understanding and helping alters – and anyone else for that matter – than we are. Nevertheless, there is no avoiding it: people (alters included) need people. We have been divinely made that way. One host was so frustrated with his child alters that he sent them all off to God, hoping never to see them again. I understand his reaction. It was a huge trial for him. Some of the alters were not toilet trained. One wanted a pacifier and formula milk and couldn’t even speak. Imagine a grown man acting that way. In fact, his wife had left him because of it. nevertheless, the Lord made it clear to him that, respite breaks and special healing sessions aside, the man must care for his own alters. Seeing the wisdom of what God had told him, I pointed out to the frustrated host that he would remain fractured – and hence below his full, God-given potential – while his alters were not with him. God can heal in amazing ways but this man needed to bond with his alters, and they with him, for him to find true wholeness. Like any other human bonding process, spending considerable time with each other is essential. There is much that people can do to help and comfort their own alters. In fact, when coupled with continually seeking divine help, I used to think that healing oneself should be the norm. However, an alter I had helped, wrote the following to a man who had alters. He sent me a copy, since I featured in it: Alters are lonely people. It is so much better not to suffer alone. I needed to talk to someone outside myself, not merely with the host I split from. I needed a safe place to say some very personal stuff and talk graphically about the things that hurt me. I needed to trust someone and to know that I could be accepted for who I am. For me, Grantley was that someone. This has helped me so much and I am grateful both to God and Grantley for their help. Before reading this, I had been vaguely aware of the value of alters talking to people other than those who share their own body. Now that I have stopped to consider it, however, the importance is obvious. Someone in solitary confinement can, of course, talk to himself and God, and doing so would be invaluable. Nevertheless, anyone in this situation will develop a desperate need to talk to other humans. This same alter explained why she would never reveal herself to a professional counselor. An alter’s most pressing need is for a friend, not a clinical healer or anyone paid to spend time with the alter. If you felt rejected and painfully lonely, would you pay someone by the hour to listen to you? Many of us would find that so hollow and humiliating that we would prefer to remain lonely! This alter believes she is typical of all alters in not wanting someone who, with an air of superiority, looks at her as a patient or a case study. She feels the same way about any do-gooder who might treat her as an object of pity or someone to be helped, rather than as a valued friend. An alter’s self-esteem is typically so low that it could barely endure such a put down. Alters need and deserve a genuine friend – someone who not only gives a listening ear and shares insights but who values their friendship. And this is not hard to do. I’m not surprised that someone who has helped large numbers of people with Dissociative Identity Disorder said he has yet to find an alter he didn’t like. Many alters need to be relieved of their pain, however, before they become likeable. In summary: ‘sending alters to God’ must never, in the mind of a counselor/therapist, nor in the mind of any host or alter, be allowed to be conceived of as getting rid of alters. If, by ‘sending alters to God,’ one means having the alter isolated from the rest of the person, it needs to be done as gently as possible and with a view to restoring the alter back to the person as soon as possible. Full healing requires the return of every alter so that you are no longer bereft of all that each alter has to offer. Related Pages God, Counselors & Inner Healing

Chuck Swindoll points out that when we need the assistance of trained people, such as a mechanic or a plumber, we have no hesitation in calling them, so why should we have a different attitude to doctors? Then there are those who have no hesitation in calling a doctor, but would feel they had let the Lord down if they consulted a psychologist. In biblical times there was not the wide range of medicines available to us today and yet the Bible is not devoid of positive reference to the use of medicine. For their medicinal qualities, the good Samaritan used both wine (an antiseptic) and oil (Luke 10:34). Paul urged Timothy to use wine to help a stomach condition (1 Timothy 5:23). Again, this is using medicine. Interestingly, Paul refers to “Luke, the beloved physician” (Colossians 4:14). He does not say, “beloved Luke, who used to be a physician before he discovered the power of Christ.” Surprisingly, Proverbs 31:6-7 refers to using alcohol as an anti-depressant. Obviously, with alcohol, as well as most medicines, one must be extremely cautious. I have avoided it all my life. I know a woman who became an alcoholic because she had severe panic attacks, and alcohol was very effective is treating this condition. No other medication worked. (There have since been medical advances that have been found to work with her.) I know of someone else addicted to caffeine, pot, and nicotine. He has a serious medical condition and no prescribed medication is effective with him. He is a biochemist and knows that these three substances have a positive chemical effect upon his condition. It is hypocritical for Christians to condemn his behavior, while maintaining an uncritical attitude to the taking of other dangerous, addictive chemicals that happen to come with a medical prescription. Doctors not only make serious blunders at times, they often prescribe drugs worse than drugs that Christians typically oppose. Christians would be horrified to think of anyone becoming an alcoholic or using marijuana, but substitute a prescribed drug that could have even worse effects in terms of addiction and side effects and health risks, and many Christians see no problem. Then there are those justifiably suspicious of western medicines who blindly assume that a supposed cure is safe, just because it is ‘natural.’ The range of natural poisons is enormous, and by no means have all the slow-acting poisons been identified. A missionary’s monthly allowance failed to reach her. For quite a while all she had to eat was oats. To make matters worse, she was sick. Where was God? When she later returned to her home country she mentioned this to a doctor, who happened to also know about the serious stomach condition she had had at that time. The doctor informed her that not only was oats the ideal diet for such a condition, a normal diet could have killed her. Clearly, the Lord had amazingly protected her, but why did he use such a convoluted means? I once heard of an astounding miracle that caused a sick person to receive medical attention. For the Lord to have healed supernaturally almost would have been less miraculous. Why he chose western medicine, I have no idea, but, like the missionary forced to eat oats, it is typical of God, in that the Almighty refused to act in a way that our puny minds find predictable. Our exciting Lord is forever taking us by surprise. Never limit him. He is just as capable of using western medicine, as he is of using traditional medicines, as he is of bypassing human intermediaries. I was once reading in Scripture about how the godly King Asa trusted in a political alliance for the security of his country, rather than trusting in the Lord. Although the link is far from obvious, the thought came to me that this king’s misplaced trust – doing what made good, human sense, rather than go out on a limb with God – parallels our tendency to trust medical experts for healing rather than the Lord. To my surprise, I continued reading to discover that just a couple of verses later it says that Asa made this exact mistake! He had diseased feet and trusted his doctors instead of the Lord (2 Chronicles 16:1-12). About a year later, long after I had forgotten all about this, I re-read the passage and exactly the same thing happened – first thinking how Asa trusting a political alliance is like us trusting a doctor and then discovering that Asa actually made the mistake of trusting in doctors. Only then did I remember the previous time I had read that passage. Both times, I felt there is nothing intrinsically wrong with using doctors, but that where we place our faith determines the ceiling of what we can expect. If we place our faith in doctors (and of course the same applies to alternative medicine) we become subject to their errors and limited knowledge. If we place our faith in God, however, even if we were to use a doctor (provided this use is not an indication that we have lost faith in God), we then have every right to expect God to over-ride the doctor’s errors. Asses’ dung mixed with worms’ blood and applied to the wound was the prescribed treatment for a splinter in ancient Egypt. Not only could this result in infection, but dung, being loaded with tetanus spores, could cause the dreaded disease of lockjaw. Suppose an ancient Egyptian gets a splinter. He thinks, This seems harmless, but I’ve heard that someone almost died from a splinter. I’d better seek the best medical treatment. A vicious cycle begins in which more and more people die or become seriously ill because of splinters, and almost everyone is too scared to risk not being treated to discover that it’s the treatment, not the splinter that is so dangerous. I fear we use the same logic today. Medical science now has a better understanding of tetanus, but hundreds of conditions remain, about which modern medical practitioners have only partial knowledge and are probably unknowingly making mistakes of a similar magnitude to their ancient Egyptian counterparts. We have only to consider the side effects and serious reactions of some patients to certain medications to realize that regardless of whether we consult a doctor, we need to fervently pray with faith in the Almighty, not with faith in fallible doctors. Placing our faith in the Lord involves giving him the right to tell us not to use a doctor if the Lord should ever so lead, as well as giving him the right to tell us to use a doctor, even if we would prefer not to use a doctor. In short, this is another area in which we must make Jesus Lord of our lives and give him the right to tell us what to do. Naturally, if we felt led to do something that from a human viewpoint would seem unwise, we would need to be particularly sure of our guidance. Our miracle working Lord delights in startling us by breaking out of limitations we, in the smallness of our faith, might imagine him confined to. So I cannot say the Lord would never lead someone to never eat again, trusting God to keep him healthy, but one would need extremely clear guidance before attempting such a thing. Otherwise, it would be sinfully testing the Lord. Likewise, to refuse needed medical treatment, trusting God to keep you healthy, is testing God, unless we do so in response to his specific guidance. If you have an iron deficiency due to an imbalanced diet, that is very close to starving yourself, isn’t it? You are starving your body of essential nutrients, even though you might be filling your stomach with other things. It might not even be iron that you are starving yourself of, but amino acids that enable your body to absorb iron. Someone who is lethargic could be downright lazy, or he could have a medical condition such as an iron deficiency. Only an expert can with certainty tell the difference between a lazy child and a sick child. Suppose you get it wrong and suppose that someone low in iron is simply bone lazy, when in reality he is trying his utmost and is deeply concerned about his low performance. Quoting Bible verses at this person, telling him to get motivated and stop being lazy, would not only be unhelpful, the effect would be cruel. He needs iron, not a verbal whipping. Now consider a person who is depressed. It could be that he simply needs a change of attitude. Or it could be that, like a person low in iron, his condition is not a product of his thinking, but due to a chemical imbalance in his body that makes him feel as if a dark cloud fogs his life. Only an expert can accurately discern between someone who simply needs to lift his game and someone with a medical condition. Just as the average person would be a fool to take out a hammer and think he can use it to fix his computer, so it would be foolish to think we could fix something as complex as the human brain by hammering them with our platitudes. Urging a person with medically induced depression to be positive is no more helpful than urging a person with an iron deficiency to get motivated. The physical deficiency needs to be addressed. And if you refuse to do this and remain under par, aren’t you in danger of testing God? Antidepressants should restore a person’s health, correcting chemical imbalances in the body, just like taking an iron supplement. Unfortunately, the science is still somewhat crude and that is why there can be side effects for some individuals to some treatments. SAM-e is a natural substance produced by the body, which, when combined with folic acid and other B group vitamins (often they come in the same pill) is claimed to be effective in treating clinical depression in many people, without side effects. I am not suggesting you take it. It is just one of a number of options you should seek the Lord about. A Pastor’s Comments Pastor Mark Deckard e-mailed me in response to this webpage and raised some interesting points. He said how he has met Christians who reject the medical profession but end up putting their faith in people who are into alternative medicine and happen to be Christian. It is no more spiritual to put one’s faith in supposedly “natural cures” than in proven medical ones. People are free to do this, of course, but let’s not think it any more “Christian” than using traditional medicine, unless in a particular, rare instance someone received clear, divine guidance to do so. I dare not try to put Almighty God in a box by thinking it impossible for him to lead someone to disregard currently accepted medical wisdom. After all, the Lord of universe knows a bit more than any doctor. Nevertheless, if we feel led to reject medical advice, I think it right to urge extreme caution and ensure we are truly hearing from God and not being swayed by someone with his/her own agenda, nor influenced by our own fears/prejudices. Mark’s comments are interesting because he is a firm believer in the supernatural. In fact, he told me he has written a book titled, Speak To The Sky: Unleashing Christ’s Authority Over Destructive Weather and believes in the power of God to save entire nations from deadly storms that are headed their way. In his e-mail he wrote: As a pastor, I have prayed for a lot of sick folks and seen many miracles, but also seen medical science work a lot as well. One woman had cancer and decided she would be healed by God, but sought out a Christian alternative medicine therapist. Traditional medicine was a racket, in her view. I felt a growing concern that she was playing a dangerous game with the devil – the one he tried to get Jesus to play. It goes like this: “Let’s see how much faith you really have. Jump off this cliff.” I quickly realized that she did not want my caution or counsel. She just wanted my support and agreement. To suggest otherwise was offensive to her. Her cancer grew worse. But she kept paying for the quack treatments and relying on nutritional regimens to chase her cancer out, while claiming that God was going to miraculously heal her and she would show those chemo/radiation fanatics (cancer experts) that their treatment was worse than the disease. She eventually moved about an hour away to be close to her ducktor (quack, quack). Months later her husband showed up on my doorstep needing counsel. He told me how he had supported his wife and believed her way. Then he confided that they were absolutely broke from this alternative treatment expense that no insurance company would touch. In the meantime, the cancer was invading her entire body. A traditional cancer doctor had told them they were stupid for going on like this. “What should we do?” he asked. I said, “Go and do what the doctors tell you to do.” So, a year after her initial diagnosis, they submitted to the chemo and radiation. Some time later the word came to me by a mutual friend that she was in complete remission and was totally healed. Two weeks later she was dead. She had simply told everyone a false report in desperate faith. She had let the cancer run for so long all treatments were a dim hope of effect. I am a total believer in God’s promise of divine healing. But I am also a total believer in the gift of medical science. The two are not in competition. James said in chapter 1:16, “Do not be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above coming down from the Father of heavenly lights who does not change like shifting shadows.” Divine healing is the perfect gift; medical science is the good gift. Every miracle I have seen took place in the midst of receiving medical care. In fact, I have come to believe that a person’s attitude toward doctors can have an impact on whether they experience a miracle of healing. The reason is that trained medical professionals are a form of authority by virtue of their gift and their mission. Remember when the Centurion recognized Jesus’ authority and his servant received healing? Recognition of human authority and respect for that authority puts us in alignment with God. Paul further established this in Romans 13. Needless to say, God did not condition our respect for authority on the authority figures’ faith in God, but on their position of authority. Just the other day I had an encounter that further reinforced this. A Pastor friend relayed his disdain for doctors and medicine and said the only way he would ever see one is if God spoke to him and told him to. He then said that years earlier he was out in the woods working and suddenly felt a wetness in his pants. Upon checking, he had passed a significant amount of blood. He told the ministers listening how he said, “Okay God, let’s do this thing . . . heal it . . . because I don’t have time for this.” He passed blood for four days and ignored it because he did not need a doctor; he had God’s Word. After the fourth day of bleeding the Lord told him, “Go to the doctor.” He did. But he was very belligerent and disrespectful to them. He acted as though it was beneath him to have to be there. Here was a team of people educated and dedicated to saving lives and he was talking to them like a bunch of chumps who don’t deserve his time. Fortunately, they caught the cancer in time and he survived. When he proudly relayed to the group his attitude and speech toward the doctors and nurses I realized why he did not get his miracle. He was rebellious and bitter and proud. The people I have seen get miracle healing are always thankful and appreciative and, yes, trusting of doctors, because they know that doctors are one of the good gifts of the Great Physician. I also believe that God’s power begins where our ability ends. When we do everything we can do, we can fully expect God to do what only he can do. Final Remarks Let’s rise to the challenge of being Spirit-led, not dominated by some manmade law that says never use medicines or always use doctors, or some such thing. God’s will for us last week, might be different to his will for us this week. Often the Lord deliberately takes us by surprise in his leading because he seeks intimacy with us. He wants us to be constantly trusting and seeking him, not to imagine we have God figured out and end up settling for our own presumptions about his will for us, rather than clinging to God himself.

A man speeds off on a dirt bike into a wilderness. He crashes. His legs are mangled and his bike is unrideable. In an amazing act of survival, he drags himself mile after mile until finally reaching help. Then he refuses medical treatment. “I can keep taking painkillers,” he says. “I’m tough. I’ve got the guts to stop myself from feeling like a cripple. I don’t want anyone’s help. I’ll live with my injuries, thank you.” He spends the rest of his life in a wheelchair because he is too scared to undergo surgery that would end his pain and enable him to walk again. Can you imagine anyone being so ridiculous? To my distress, I keep seeing the equivalent over and over. I see people haunted by past traumas, suffering deep inner wounds that have crippled them for so long that they cannot even imagine how fulfilling life could be for them. And yet they remain too frightened to heal. Scared by the unknown cost and consequences of healing, they needlessly suffer, and miss out on so much good. During World War II, the Japanese captured the Philippines. Eventually the Japanese were defeated. A Japanese soldier refused to surrender and went into hiding. That was heroic. At the end of the war Japan began to rebuild but this soldier stayed in hiding in the Philippines, eking out a meager existence, remaining needlessly destitute and cut off from his country, his family and friends, year after year, decade after decade. That was as pitiful as it was tragic. So it is with anyone who refuses to do what it takes to heal from inner pain. It can take as much heroism to heal as it did to survive what you originally suffered. In fact, healing is usually far more heroic – not because it is more distressing than what you have already endured but because every step of the healing journey is an act of freewill. The last thing I want is to criticize anyone who refuses to heal. What I yearn for, however, is to help motivate such people to become the heroes they are capable of being. And I do not use the word “hero” casually. I am convinced that for all eternity, heaven will hail such people as true heroes who took Jesus’ hand and with him turned tragedy into triumph. Their achievement might be little understood on earth but those worthy of heaven will have their eyes opened to true heroism. “Wilt thou be made whole?” asked Jesus of the man who had been hopelessly crippled for thirty-eight years (John 5:6, KJV). What initially sounds like a stupid question turns out to be a most critical, highly penetrating question that cuts to the core. If he decided he truly wanted to be healed, his entire world, as he had known it, would crumble. The instant he accepted healing, the beggar’s livelihood would evaporate. No longer would people see him worthy of charity. He would have to work for a living and yet here he was, an adult who had never developed work skills, nor even a work ethic. Suddenly there would be so many responsibilities he would be expected to take up, each of which he would have to learn from scratch, so very many years behind every other man his age. Blind Bartimaeus, of whom Jesus asked a similar question (Mark 10:51), suddenly gained the potential to read and write but he had missed years of learning. Did he have the patience and humility to start learning as an adult? Jesus is not an abuser, forcing himself or his healing upon people. As much as he longs to heal us, he waits until we are willing. The Old Testament Scriptures, says the New, were divinely recorded to warn and instruct we who live under the New Testament. So let’s commence learning: * Let’s learn from the Israelites who broke God’s heart by wanting the humiliation of returning in defeat to slavery in Egypt, rather than persist with the prolonged sacrifices that freedom entailed (Numbers 11:1; 14:3-4). We can expect the healing journey to be long and hard. * They later frustrated God’s plan to bless them by refusing to enter the Promised Land for fear of facing giants (Deuteronomy 1:27-35). The healing journey promises much, but it is scary. * Like them recognizing their mistake too late and having to wander in the wilderness for many more years (Numbers 14:40-45), we must bravely do things God’s way without delay or suffer the consequences. * The next generation compromised with the enemy and failed to appropriate what was theirs for the taking, thus making life unnecessarily difficult for themselves and their descendants (Joshua 23:12-13; Judges 2:1-4). Likewise, we can make great progress and yet still get stuck at any point in the journey to full healing. Like them, we can end up missing out on God’s best, with consequences not just for us but for our loved ones. The stakes are high, though perhaps not as high as in the Old Testament examples. The spiritual principles, however, remain firm. If you cannot embrace healing for yourself or your loved ones, at least do it for God. If you cannot do it for the significant earthly benefits, at least do it for the, “Well done, good and faithful servant,” and for the eternal reward. I beg you not to act like the servant in Jesus’ parable who buried the talent entrusted to him, rather than developing it. The last thing I want you to do is to force yourself into some supposed therapeutic method I have devised. Nor am I for a moment suggesting you set up your own healing program or that of any other human. Instead, I am begging you to seek God as to the methods and timing (and the degree of human help) he wants for you, and to bravely go with him on your healing journey wherever and whenever he leads. Rest in the assurance that God’s way is perfect, filled with loving wisdom infinitely beyond anything any human could dream up. He will personalize your healing journey because you are unique, and no one in the universe is more loved, nor more special to God than you. Most of us find that staggeringly difficult to believe because no one else has ever come close to treating us that way. But God is astonishingly different to anyone else, having no human flaws or limitations. You might like to reassure yourself of how special you are to God by reading How Much does God Love Me? and links on that page. Related Pages: Living in Denial? Courage to Heal for Child Sex Abuse God, Counselors and Inner Healing

When Your Therapist, Counselor, Doctor, Dentist or Other Health Professional Does Not Understand Dissociative Identity Disorder It is not unusual for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.) either to be unable to find a therapist/counselor (for simplicity I’ll use the term therapist) who is not experienced with treating D.I.D., or for people to have established a rapport with such a therapist, and wish to continue with him/her. Even if less than ideal, a therapist who has little understanding of Dissociative Identity Disorder can be quite valuable. For an open-minded therapist, treating someone with D.I.D. for the first time can be a priceless learning experience, as well as helpful for the client. Any good therapist should be able to help a wide range of people, including children, and a significant portion of helping someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder is like treating several different people who all happen to share the same body. If you have D.I.D., however, you should inform the therapist that you might suddenly need to be regarded as a completely different person for a while. In fact, any professional you see (even a dentist or doctor) needs to be alerted to the possibility that you might unexpectedly switch to a different alter. That means that at any moment you might have the same body and voice but act quite out of character (angry, swearing, afraid, confused, childlike or whatever), or suddenly not know what, for you, is basic information. Without such a warning, a therapist would not only be understandably confused but could needlessly upset the alter by, for example, mildly rebuking the alter for doing or saying something that, by your usual standards, is stupid or inappropriate. Even if it has never yet occurred, a dramatic switch is more likely to be triggered during therapy or some medical procedure than in everyday life. Hospitals can be particularly triggering and traumatic for people with D.I.D. Increased likelihood of a switch includes dental visits, physical therapy, scans, blood tests, and so on. So, sometime or another, it could happen that you are ready to go home after such a visit and an alter is in charge of your body who is not good at driving or navigating, or does not know precisely where you live, or even acts in a way that increases your chance of being assaulted on the way home. If an adult friend is unable to take you home, here’s a suggestion as to how to increase your safety. Before the session, leave your car keys and wallet with the receptionist or medical professional and ask for these items to be returned to you at the end of the session only after you correctly answer several questions. Here’s a suggested list you leave with the receptionist to ask you (for the receptionist’s sake, include correct answers): 1. What’s your name? 2. What’s your home address? 3. What year is it? 4. How old are you? 5. Do you feel safe and confident about driving (or whatever method of transport you use) home? Ideally, a therapist should have somewhere private you could go to regain your composure after a therapy session. You will not always need such a place, but it is not impossible that at some time you find yourself sobbing for a while after the session ends. It might be wise to take a favorite toy with you to comfort a little alter, but if you are going home alone you, by the time you leave the little alter needs to be inside and a capable adult part of you in control of your body. Related Pages God, Counselors & Inner Healing

Divine Healing of Inner Pain   * Is it a spiritual cop-out to use a therapist? * How likely is it to unknowingly grieve your divine healer by sliding into exalting an advisor, pastor or friend into a position in your life that belongs to God alone? * Is it sin to become dependent on a counselor or even a pastor? * It is being godly to refuse a psychologist’s help or could it be a manifestation of pride that displeases God? Such questions have serious spiritual and practical implications for anyone seeking divine healing of inner pain. As you slip into this webpage, don’t assume you know where it is heading. My goal goes beyond uncovering just one danger. To twist an observation of C. S. Lewis, the devil delights in setting multiple traps, in the hope that if we become aware of one, we will back off so far that we fall into another. Let’s begin with the trap that one of my many trauma-survivor friends is passionate about exposing. Kathy, as I will call her, says: I used to be so dependent on receiving support from other people that I neglected God and what he was trying to teach me. I had gradually fallen into the sin of revering whatever therapists and doctors told me as a more important and reliable source of truth than God. When, for example, they told me I was unable do something, I didn’t attempt it – not even when I heard God whispering otherwise to me. I allowed these well-meaning people to smother God-given hopes and dreams. And when friends in Christ tried to alert me to my mistake I lashed out at them. I knew I was wrong but it felt safe and comfortable to keep going as I had been. So I ran to others who would agree that it was okay for me not to fully listen to what God was saying. I lied to myself, telling myself that I really was listening to God and that it was just that others couldn’t see it. What made this self-deception easier is that I actually was listening to God, but only in areas I either wanted to hear or was already doing. Consequently, I hurt people around me by encouraging them to do as I was doing. I wasted time that could have been spent growing closer to God. I delayed progress in my healing for a significant period because I refused to see that my reliance on doctors and counselors had reached spiritually dangerous levels. I became so hardhearted and blind in my sin of idolizing the support systems in my life that I pushed away emergency exits God offered to escape this dependency. My stubbornness forced God to help me the hard way. He suddenly removed, at essentially the same time, every single support system from my life that I had been wrongfully leaning on. I was devastated. “Why am I being persecuted like this?” I cried, “More trauma! My life is a series of trauma after trauma after trauma! God has nothing good for me because humans keep destroying what good things he provides!” A godly friend said I had a choice: I could either stay in the muck I had put myself in and seek out other human support systems and repeat the same mistake by getting too attached to them, or I could seize the God-given opportunity presented by the loss of the human support and use it to drive me to focus on getting to know God again. I could learn to listen to everything God says about my trauma, my pain, my life, my circumstances, and so on. I looked hard at my progress in healing and was forced to admit I was stuck. I could point to little things that had changed but not so much in my mindset and the direction of my life. So I went to work on letting God back more fully into my life. I asked him to open my heart to what he is saying and to help me not ignore his still small voice or make excuses when he shines his spotlight on places in me that need correction. I asked him to help me to rely on him and give me warning signals whenever I am heading down the wrong path again. God is changing and working on me in this area but it remains a struggle. There are still many times when I have to consciously pull back from people and supports around me for a while because I can hear God whispering warnings to me and I need to refocus on him. There are also times when I have to take breaks from activities such as TV watching, because they are becoming too important to me and are hindering my relationship with God and I begin to use them to ignore what he has told me I need to do. It has been all too easy to make support systems my idols without intending to. It is not that I should never reach out for support. When I do, though, I need to do my utmost to weigh everything against what God has to say in every aspect of my life. What/who is the first thing I run to when I am in crisis? Is my first response to difficulty to run to a human and share my experiences and (maybe) ask for prayer? Or is it to run to God with my prayers and hurts first and to others for additional support second? I know the devastation that I have wrought in my own life by not getting this right and I want to spare you that. At her lowest point, Kathy ended up with more faith in the assertions and advice of highly trained experts than in God. This reminds me of what I have written in a webpage I call  A Christian Perspective on the Use of Medicine and Doctors.  Permit me to quote a relevant part: I was once reading in Scripture about how the godly King Asa trusted in a political alliance for the security of his country, rather than trusting in the Lord. Although the link is far from obvious, the thought came to me that this king’s misplaced trust – doing what made good, human sense, rather than go out on a limb with God – parallels our tendency to trust medical experts for healing rather than the Lord. To my surprise, I continued reading to discover that just a couple of verses later it says that Asa made this exact mistake! He had diseased feet and trusted his doctors instead of the Lord (2 Chronicles 16:1-12). Long after I had forgotten all about this, I re-read the passage and exactly the same thing happened – first thinking how Asa trusting a political alliance is like us trusting a doctor and then discovering that Asa actually made the mistake of trusting in doctors. Only then did I remember the previous occasion I had read that passage. Both times, I felt there is nothing intrinsically wrong with using doctors, but that where we place our faith determines the ceiling of what we can expect. If we place our faith in doctors (and of course the same applies to alternative medicine) we become subject to their errors and limited knowledge. If we place our faith in God, however, even if we were to use a doctor (provided this use is not an indication that we have lost faith in God), we then have every right to expect God to over-ride the doctor’s errors. Kathy’s experience reminds me of another Old Testament lesson. God told Moses to craft a bronze serpent so that whoever looked upon it would be healed of snake bite (Numbers 21:8-9). That was God’s method; the way he chose to heal. Nevertheless, Hezekiah later had to honor God by smashing “into pieces the bronze snake Moses had made, for up to that time the Israelites had been burning incense to it” (2 Kings 18:4). The Bible records such events for the tragic reason that we, too, are in danger of making a mistake of the same magnitude. God often chooses to use people to assist inner healing, but we can end up breaking God’s heart by giving these people a place in our lives that belongs to God alone. Another of my trauma-surviving friend adds: I have been searching my heart and asking the Lord to show me any sin in me. In doing so, I have to confess that I am in some ways like Kathy, and yet the opposite. Counselors or pastors never assumed a role in my esteem that belongs to God alone; fear did. Fear controlled me, driving me to not connect with people. “What they don’t know they can’t use against me,” has been my motto based on very real, highly traumatizing experiences. My whole life has revolved around fear and trying to be tougher than it. Yet, now I can look back and see that I was co-dependent on fear. Fear, rather than God, was my guide. If I felt no fear I would do it; if fear sent alarms blaring in my mind, I wouldn’t do it. Making fear my god seems so foolish to me, now, but my mind had been so paralyzed by fear that I thought my survival depended upon doing whatever fear dictated. I have always refused to consult a counselor, a pastor or virtually any human help. To do so would be admitting to myself and at least one other person that I not only have a mental problem, but one that I’m too dumb to fix. There is no shame in being unable to repair a modern car engine or in needing a surgeon’s help to operate on myself but to seek some do-gooder’s help to deal with my own inner issues seemed too shameful. Moreover, the thought of seeing a counselor felt to me like paying someone to pretend to be my friend. My self-esteem had already been mutilated and my loneliness was devastating enough without adding that humiliation. Having been betrayed in my childhood by a counselor, plus being repeatedly told that psychologists are of the devil, I ended up with an almost suicidal stubbornness about rejecting professional help. I presume what saved me, however, is that despite it all, I remained open to God using people to help me. In fact, I kept pleading with God to send anyone who would believe in me. I promised – and God knew I meant it – that with such support I would endure whatever pain and perseverance it took to fully heal. I shudder to think what would have happened had not God in his mercy gone to the extreme of sending into my life someone who became my trusted, devoted friend – someone I never paid and yet had the exceptional skills of a highly qualified counselor/therapist. Otherwise, my fear, pride and hang-ups about seeing a counselor would have kept my life decimated. After much heart-searching, I am forced to conclude that healing comes from obedience and that the will of God is the safest place of all. Now, before I do anything, I am going to ask myself, how is my choice going to honor God? Even if I sometimes struggle with the decision, I have already committed myself to choosing God and his ways. While I yearn to honor God, he will keep moving me toward healing, breaking the lies that have crippled me and bringing about his will in my life. This is the safest way to live. God’s Mysterious Ways Whenever the God of infinite intelligence acts, expect to be mystified. A common mistake when guessing how the Almighty will move is to presume it will be stunningly quick and dramatic, and when it isn’t, we are left scratching our heads. “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,” says Proverbs 25:2. “Truly you are a God who hides himself,” adds Isaiah 45:15. Imagine special forces who slip behind enemy lines. Disguised as ordinary people doing seemingly ordinary things, they accomplish exploits that cleverly remain undetected. Similarly, God frequently does things under people’s noses that they totally miss because to them it seems too slow or “normal” to be God. Even the most significant spiritual events in human history – when the eternal Son of God walked this planet – were totally missed by the world’s greatest theologians and spiritual leaders, despite speaking with him face to face. We will look at two aspects of God’s astounding ability to hide himself. Each of these is of critical importance not only to those seeking inner healing but to all who wish to enjoy and interact with God. 1. Moved by his great love for us, God delights in doing things slowly To grasp an aspect of this, permit me to cite what I have written elsewhere: Miracles glorify God. Displays of divine power draw attention to the Almighty and win him immense praise. If our Lord were into ego trips, such attempts to wow us would be commonplace. But our Lord is never egotistical, nor superficial. Instead, he is the ultimate in sacrificial love and wisdom. He seeks to exalt not himself but us. Like a wise parent who lovingly gives his children vegetables when they want nothing but candy, he will even risk breaking his own heart by exposing himself to the wrath of his darlings by doing things we do not realize are ultimately in our highest interest. For example, when God miraculously delivers from temptation – a heavy smoker instantly losing all desire to smoke, a porn addict never again tempted to lust, a junkie suffering no withdrawal symptoms, and so on –  God  is glorified and the recipients of the miracle are denied the opportunity to win glory for themselves. In contrast, if he lets us battle temptation, his name is blackened whenever we lose, and when we win we bring  ourselves  eternal honor. Such battles build Christlike character like nothing else can achieve. Until our appetite for Godliness matures, however, most of us would rather be spoilt brats than Christlike. We crave a soft life, but that is not how anyone becomes a spiritual champion. In the short-term we might prefer to be lazy, but the King’s goal is to make his children regal. When God’s love compels him to do what is ultimately in our best interest, the healing might seem so agonizingly slow and unspectacular, and require so much human cooperation, that it takes significant faith to believe God is actually behind it. If God did it all himself, however, we would lose the opportunity to grow in faith and to deepen our walk with God, to build Christlike character and to win eternal glory. 2. God confirms in his Word that he prefers to work through people Again, this is best explained by quoting from what I have written elsewhere: God alone thoroughly understands us and has answers to the most complex matters we could ever face. In theory, we need no one but God to resolve our inner turmoil and meet our every need. In practice, however, the Lord has purposely arranged it so that we need the help of other people. As he says of fellow Christians: 1 Corinthians 12:21-22  The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable . . . Christ is always the Head – the Source – but because of his great love for his spiritual body, he often deliberately limits himself by choosing to meet certain needs within someone only through another Christian. Consider how in the following, healing is made contingent upon seeking human help (elders) and upon confessing sins not to God but to other Christians: James 5:14,16  Is any one of you sick? He should call the elders of the church to pray over him . . . Therefore confess your sins  to each other  and pray  for each other  so that you may be healed. . . .  (Emphasis mine) If we consider ourselves too superior or “spiritual” to seek human help – a Christian counselor, perhaps – our pride could be cutting ourselves off from divine help and the peace that results. Note who it is that God guides: Psalm 25:9  He guides the humble in what is right and teaches them his way. No wonder the Bible is filled with such scriptures as: James 4:10  Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up. Seeking God is obviously of extreme importance in obtaining the divine wisdom exalted in the book of Proverbs, and living in this wisdom is sure to increase one’s peace. It would be a critical mistake, however, to overlook the importance this inspired book gives to seeking human help and advice: Proverbs 12:15  The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice. Proverbs 15:22  Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed. Proverbs 19:20  Listen to advice and accept instruction, and in the end you will be wise. Proverbs 20:18  Make plans by seeking advice . . . Consider carefully the implications of these Scriptures: Matthew 11:25   . . . I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children . . . 1 Corinthians 1:19-21,26-29  For it is written: “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. . . .Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. He chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things – and the things that are not – to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him. Intelligence, learning and theological knowledge, instead of making us superior and independent, can actually contribute to arrogance that blocks one’s ability to receive spiritual revelation. Though few of its victims realize it, this blockage renders those who think themselves highly capable more dependent than ever on people they are tempted to look down upon. From early childhood, men, in particular, are trained to pride themselves in their independence and to treat asking for help as humiliating weakness. Countering this brainwashing is not easy, but renewing our mind and dying to self needs to include an extensive revision of such worldly thinking. God typically works through people, not because the Omnipotent Lord of perfection has the slightest deficiency, but because he loves people so much that he longs to give them the thrilling and undeserved privilege of working with God in tasks of divine significance. Like the proudest father, he wants his children to grow up to be like him. Achieving this takes much practice and time spent with our divine Daddy and, despite our childish mistakes that spoil divine perfection, this interaction with God thrills him. It is how to give a priceless gift to the God who has everything. Every time we seek the help of someone God wants to use, we delight God by our humility and by allowing that person the matchless privilege of acting in union with Almighty God in achieving something of eternal value. Just as leprous Naaman had to humble himself by dipping in the dirty Jordan before God acted, so for us to receive God’s inner healing we might have to humble ourselves by seeking human counsel (2 Kings 5:10-14). So it is the norm for God to cleverly hide himself by doing things slowly, requiring us to contribute and by working in partnership with people rather than acting as a loner. This is done to inspire us to grow in humility, perseverance and spiritual sensitivity. In 2 Chronicles 35:20-24 we read of godly King Josiah who ended up dying because of refusing to heed what God told him  by the mouth of a pagan king . We have to be so in tune with God that we can discern when he is speaking to us even through people we would presume to be God’s enemies. God’s heart – his love, integrity, grace, faithfulness, holiness and so on – always remain gloriously and steadfastly predictable. His methods, on the other hand, are dynamic, creative and surprising. In Jesus’ earthly ministry, for example, no one could ever predict what means he would use to heal. He might rebuke the illness, lay hands on the person, spit on the person, tell him to show himself to priests, heal from a distance, smear mud on the person and tell him to wash, use the edge of his clothing, or some other means. Likewise, you cannot know for sure who God will use to heal you or whether he will do it without a human. One reason for God’s extreme unpredictability is to keep us sensitively looking to him and not losing this intimacy by devoting ourselves to formulas or people. How we react to our every relationship – from the darling of our heart to our most bitter enemy – is of critical importance to God and to our healing. We need a sensitivity to the Spirit and a delicate balance between giving each human relationship too much or too little weight. Whether it be financial or spiritual advisors, therapists or doctors, friends or revered pastors, we can grieve God not only by not consulting them but also by trusting them too much.

Help For Multiple Personality Disorder As impossible as it is to become physically fit without training sessions that end with you feeling temporarily weaker and more tired, so healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities) necessitates bouts when you feel you are regressing. Such episodes are particularly common when unhealed alters come to the fore, and unless these alters’ pain and confusion touch you, full healing will forever elude you. Times of feeling worse rather than better are best understood by gaining an overview of the entire healing journey. So let’s start there before delving deeper. Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D. – also known as Multiple Personality Disorder) is primarily about hiding from yourself emotional pain and sometimes facts that, at least in the past, you would much rather forget. The dilemma, however, is that whatever is hidden can never heal. Moreover, discovering all your alters is essential not just to emotional wholeness but to intellectual wholeness. Until you win their confidence and coax them to share everything with you, each alter has exclusive access to part of your brain. This exclusive access includes far more than bad memories but good memories, valuable information you have learned and abilities you wish you had. Since everyone is different, I cannot specify what exciting abilities you will discover, but by befriending alters you are likely to become better than you dreamt possible at some of the following: * Courage * Eyesight * Singing in tune * Rock climbing * Short-term memory * Long-term memory * Creative cooking * Humor * Public speaking * Artistic ability * Poetry/creative writing * One or more foreign languages * Mechanical ability * Spelling * Mathematics * Enjoyment of marital relations * Intimacy with God, hearing from God, spiritual warfare, etc * And the possibilities keep going There are also less easily quantified benefits of discovering new alters. One woman, a mother of two who has quite a few alters, told me the following today: It is no exaggeration to say that some of the most precious moments in my life have come by having interaction with my alters. Last night, for example, I worked in a soup kitchen to feed the homeless. The supervisor of the kitchen asked me to stir a huge pot of soup. My arm got tired. I’m right-handed, but my alter, Princess, is left-handed, so I told her, “Princess, I need your help. Can you stir this for me?” She replied, “I’d love to, Mommy!” With a grin she took the spoon and stirred and I could see her put her four-year-old arm around me and I heard a soft “I love you, Mommy.” I’ve had many a moment like this in my journey of healing from D.I.D. If all my alters had instantly integrated with me, I might have gained the skill of using my left hand, but I might lose the precious moments of seeing my four-year-old embrace me and speak of her love for me. That moment carried me through a wonderful evening and helped me be more present to enjoy the evening than I would have ordinarily been able to. The territory I feel I’m gaining in wholeness is made all the sweeter through interaction with my alters. I am taking back ground that is rightfully mine. I have worked long and hard for this and I feel that I deserve it. I will let no one take it from me. If you are devoted to Christ, however, you have an even more powerful motivation than so far mentioned for persisting in the discovery process: glorifying God. It is hard to know for sure when your every alter has fully revealed to you every secret, but until then, there are probably parts of you that do not know God, are terrified of him, hate him, or are even sold-out to Satan. These parts of you are not yet in love with God, nor in submission to him, nor able to glorify him by reaching anything like their full emotional, intellectual and spiritual potential. Burying your pain can turns out as spiritually serious as burying your talent (Matthew 25:25-30). So discovering what has been buried, is essential for healing and emotional, intellectual and spiritual wholeness. This necessitates courageously facing the unknown and the unpleasant. It is as if you live in a cramped corner of a squalid house that has the potential to be a magnificent mansion. The tiny part you currently occupy is relatively clean but is regularly invaded by pests and disgusting smells because behind barricades and closed doors are filth and vermin. A little exploration and cleaning, however, will reveal everything you could ever hope for in a house. Behind one door you have never opened is a swimming pool. Hidden underneath trash in another part you have never ventured into is a spa. Other unexplored areas, when cleaned up, would reveal a sauna, an entertainment area, a studio, office space you have always craved, and a library filled with dust-covered books you have always wanted. Hidden behind trash in various rooms are priceless masterpieces, antiques, and other treasures you have not even imagined. So much can be yours; all you need do is be willing to endure the initial stench, and clean up. If you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, hiding things from yourself usually continued for very many years, so you can expect the uncovering of all these things to take a long while because of the sheer volume of material. Additional challenges are a natural reluctance to face the unpleasant and unknown, and the time it takes to resolve whatever issues are uncovered. Even when proceeding superbly with this process, it is inevitable that you will have times when it feels like you are going backwards. This is because you will not only be continually resolving matters and healing from them, you will be continually discovering new things that are so disturbing that you had hidden them from yourself all your life. Obviously, the resolving and healing will make you feel better but each discovery of new issues that need urgent attention will initially make you feel worse. So by its very nature, the healing process involves many ups and downs. Let’s put it another way: whenever you make progress in healing, alters that until now have kept hidden but are desperate for relief will be encouraged to reveal themselves so that they, too, can heal. Whenever new alters reveal themselves, it is a huge step forward because it is the only way they can heal, and their issues have been adversely affecting you, even though the distress has largely been in the background. When an alter begins to surface, however, whatever has been pushed down comes to the fore, and the new alter’s raw feelings will flood over the rest of you in a torrent so overwhelming that it dazes you. For example, the new alter will be disturbingly confused over suddenly discovering that many years have passed without him/her knowing it, The alter’s bewilderment is likely to be so strong that feelings of confusion sweep over the rest of you. When this process begins, it is likely to feel so vague and the alter so shy that you do not even realize that a new alter is surfacing. If ever you start feeling weird, there is quite a chance that this is what is happening. For perhaps as long as a few days, the effect of a new alter’s ignorance can be so strong that it seems as if almost everything you have learned about D.I.D. has been knocked out of you and you seem to be back to square one. Moreover, you will be hit not only by the alter’s ignorance but his/her pain, anger, bad habits, attitude toward God and so on. Then the alter will begin to come to terms with all the changes that occurred since he/she was last active and begin benefitting from you sharing your knowledge and your understanding of God, and the alter will gradually find peace. As a result, you will gradually feel better again. Dissociative Identity Disorder is like having been injured so severely that in order to heal fully a surgeon must take you through a series of major operations over several months. Just when you are healed enough from one operation to start enjoying the benefits, it means you are strong enough for the next operation. Even though you are making continual progress toward full recovery, you can be sure it will not feel like it immediately after each operation. When a machine is being repaired it is disassembled and is temporarily in a worse state than ever. So it is when healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Unfortunately, healing is a long, drawn out process because the accumulation of years of abuse, plus many more years of neglect, are finally being attended to. It involves facing things you have always avoided and even now you must grapple with a yearning to procrastinate and a serious reluctance to do what healing requires. The following, shared with permission of course, is adapted from an email exchange I had with someone with D.I.D. She starts; my replies are in a different color: Lately, a while after I have a conversation with someone, I think back and can’t remember if I actually had that conversation or if it was a dream. If I approach the person later on and ask if I had had the conversation, sometimes the answer is yes and sometimes no. This is quite common. It is just that your alters have been “out” more than usual. Sometimes when an alter has been in the fore you have been present, but only in the background (this is known as co-consciousness). Since you were not the main participant but only overhearing the conversation, you have only a vague recollection of it. This explains times when the answer was, “Yes.” On the other times, you planned to say it but never got around to it. People without D.I.D. have such experiences but what makes you even less sure as to whether it actually happened is because of experiences, like the first that you described, when vague recollections proved accurate. I feel like I am losing my mind and becoming more detached rather than being put together. Not only are you not  losing  your mind, you are actually in the process of  gaining  your mind like never before. Having your alters “out” more often is the means whereby you will end up discovering parts of your mind that have been hidden from you and eventually gaining control of your mind like never before. Yes, in a sense you  are  temporarily becoming more detached, but remember this: if you wish to repair a complex machine you must first dissemble it. If you want more control of your mind you must first discover those parts that you had previously been unaware of. And to bring a machine to peak performance you must carefully examine every part and ensure it is fully restored. So it is with bringing yourself to peak condition; you must carefully examine and restore each part of you. I think I was recently sharing with my Pastor a memory I had about a doctor’s visit when I was quite young. But I’m not sure whether I actually told him. Most likely that’s because the part of you that had stored the memory was in the fore during the conversation, whereas you were only in the background and so it seemed less vivid to you. I was pretty shocked that I recalled that childhood doctor’s visit after all these years. Where had the memory been all this time? The memory had been with an alter, locked away from  your  consciousness but not from your alter’s consciousness. This time when the alter was sharing it, you were co-conscious and became aware of it for the first time. See! You are regaining access to lost memories. This is the opposite of losing your mind, even though it will initially seem quite confusing. Recently my son was reminding me that he was working a particular night. I replied that he had never told me he had that job and that I don’t want him to work that night. He looked at me like I was crazy and told me we had spoken about it and I said it was okay to work. He was definite about the conversation but I do not remember having it with him. This is common with D.I.D. and you have to be careful. If people claim you had a conversation that you know nothing of, don’t deny it, or people might think you are lying. Just fish for more information. My husband has been asking me what is wrong lately. He says it’s like my head is in the clouds. I am losing things and putting things away in odd places. He says I seem preoccupied, forgetting what I say and sometimes I stutter my words. The storing of things in places you don’t recall is being done by other alters. Instead of being hidden deep inside of you, too terrified to interact with the real world, they are gaining confidence and coming out. They are not used to doing things the way you currently do them, so articles could end up in what to you seem strange places. It is disconcerting for you at present, but it will pass, as you and your alters get used to conversing with each other and start keeping each other informed of what each one does. Whether you realize it or not, however, the alters are benefitting from being out. For example, they are beginning to realize that they are not living in the place they grew up in. This will be confusing for them at first but when you are eventually able to freely converse with them, they will find it easier to believe you when you tell them they are now in a safe location and that their abuser no longer has access to them. This will be a huge relief to them, and for you it will probably mean a lessening of what to you had felt like years of inexplicable anxiety. The stuttering is also an alter speaking. Stuttering is not unexpected in traumatized little children. I’ve been wondering if I am thinking of all this D.I.D. stuff too much and it’s getting to me. You see, things like this never happen to me. I am very organized and I know what I say when I say it. I have always been focused and in touch with what’s going on. Your alters are gaining confidence, through you and your counselor accepting them, and so they are coming out more. This is essential for healing. It is just a stage you are going through. In time, your alters will keep you better informed as to what they do. It’s a just matter of learning how to work as a team work. Keep remembering that these alters are vital parts of you that you very much need. By them coming out more, you will end up not only being able to access their memories etc that are critical keys to your healing, but also access to intellectual abilities that you never imagined you had. Even though as you persist with healing there will be ups and downs, the overall trend will be up, and things will gradually get easier and better. You will understand yourself far better. Mysterious aspects of your life will at last make sense. Alters will grow strong and able to nurture and comfort and help needy alters, thus easing your workload with new alters. With alters healing, developing and assisting, you will become increasingly capable. Uncontrollable habits will fade. Frustrating and/or embarrassing limitations will disappear. Life will become more fulfilling and enjoyable, you will be more empowered to help other people, and God will be glorified. But it all hinges on your willingness to explore areas of your life you have never before had the courage to face. Related Pages Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personalities) Christian Support

Who’s to blame? Innocent? Guilty? Temporarily Insane? Do Alters Know Right From Wrong? Who’s Fault? How Accountable are People with Multiple Personalities? We will explore this statement in greater detail, but for those anxious for a quick answer, here it is:   Although, for most of the time, people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities) are morally accountable, there can definitely be occasions when a part of them that cannot be held morally accountable takes over and does unacceptable things that their accountable parts are unable to prevent. We remain responsible before God, however, to do all we can to heal.   Although, with Dissociative Identity Disorder, instances of diminished responsibility often occur without having peculiar gaps in their consciousness, some people experience this. They occasionally have times of such little conscious control that they might as well have been sleepwalking. They have apparently been awake and actively doing things but when they finally become aware of their surroundings they have no idea what has happened in the previous minutes or perhaps longer. For some, it is so common that they accept it as a normal part of life.   I know a devout Christian who for thirty years was a highly respected therapist who helped people with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Almost until the very end of this time she had no idea that she, too, had alters; let alone one who was literally a demonized witch who sometimes did ungodly things to some of her clients. The discovery shocked her beyond words. She was especially horrified over having had a negative impact on some of those she had poured out her life to help.   Having had the privilege of getting to know this woman, I have grown to deeply respect her integrity and devotion to Christ. The real shock is not that for all those years God could have used this woman. The shock is that many of us are too blinded by our failings to realize that it is equally mind-boggling that God dares let his name be blackened by allowing  any  human be involved in any form of ministry. All of us remain unworthy to be regarded as representatives of the exalted Lord who is the personification of perfection. Anyone thinking otherwise is deceived.   Degree of accountability might sometimes have serious legal implications for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder (also known as Multiple Personality Disorder). Just as important and far more common, however, are the heartbreaking relationship and emotional implications.   Suppose, for example, someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder has a part (often called an alter or insider) who commits marital infidelity without the awareness of the rest of the person. To what extent would that person’s partner be justified in holding the person responsible for the adulterous act? I am not talking about making excuses, nor forgiveness, but precisely how responsible for their actions are people with multiple personalities?   Understanding the extent to which alters are responsible for their actions is also a huge factor in whether someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder blames, despises or feels compassion for his/her parts (alters). And this attitude, in turn, profoundly influences healing.   Clearly, issues of diminished responsibility are of critical importance and need to be fully grappled with.   In our investigation we will push aside the divine command that obligates us to love even our enemies. We will likewise disregard the Bible’s emphatic insistence on the necessity to forgive those who have treated us appallingly. We will leave out of the mix the horrifying fact that all of us are such atrocious moral failures that only the cross stands between any of us and an eternity in hell.   Love works wonders within the lover. As it flows, love heals, beautifies, empowers and glorifies the one it comes from. Love softens a dry, twisted heart. The alternative – allowing oneself to have a judgmental spirit – hardens one’s heart. Like the blazing summer sun sucking the life out of a neglected bed of flowers, a judgmental spirit shrivels one’s soul until it loses its beauty and value.   But none of this will be considered here.  For this webpage we will throw out of the window love, mercy and divine obligation. The sole focus is whether we can justly condemn alters for the offenses they seem guilty of.   Most of the time, even when switching ‘personalities,’ almost anyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder is highly responsible and capable. Are there occasional exceptions in these people’s lives, however? Could there be rare times when they are no more capable of knowing right from wrong than an infant? If a person is usually quite sane but on rare occasions loses control and is taken over against his/her will by a part that is incapable of assuming adult responsibilities, might it be appropriate for the person at such times even to be regarded, from a legal perspective, as temporarily insane?   Dissociative Identity Disorder is all about one part of a person being cut off from significant knowledge that another part has. Any universal statements beyond that, however, are in short supply because the degree of ignorance varies immensely. It varies not just from person to person but from alter to alter and according to how healed an alter is at any moment.   Often people with Dissociative Identity Disorder suffer the embarrassment of being accused of lying because they have no knowledge of having done or experienced something that part of them definitely did. Many alters not only believe they are little children and act like it, we will see that they can actually have less understanding than normal little children. On the other hand, alters who are healing might gain knowledge, abilities and accountability way beyond that of children of the age they still consider themselves to be. An alter who has been ignorant for decades can rapidly absorb vast amounts of intellectual, moral and spiritual information and understanding. In just moments, alters can go from having mistaken beliefs, to discovering they have been tricked and suddenly being so overwhelmed by guilt that they consider themselves unforgivable. Of course, from that point forward they become much more accountable than they previously had been.   So the degree of understanding of someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder is not a constant but hinges on which part of the person was in control and how knowledgeable that part was at that precise moment.   Over very many years, I have kept meeting more and more alters who have seemed evil or disgusting or obnoxious (often all three) – so much so that I would have felt certain they were demons, had it not been for my extensive experience. I have conversed with vast numbers of alters that I initially had to struggle not to despise. After showing them Christ’s tender love, however, each has quite quickly turned into a highly likeable person with an unmistakably beautiful heart. Primarily, the astonishing transformation occurred simply because I explained some matters that helped these alters finally have access to spiritual and other knowledge that other parts of the person already had.   When you learn what ignorance such alters had been kept in, what basic abilities they had never been allowed to develop, what insidious lies they had been fed, and the fear and torment that had driven them, your heart will melt and your every tendency to be critical of them will evaporate. You will not only feel deep sympathy for them, you will probably end up admiring them for enduring an impossible situation as well as they had.   Reasons for Diminished Responsibility     Formed When Young & No Chance to Mature   This is the most obvious instance of diminished responsibility. Some alters have not even been potty trained and when the alter is in control of the body, the person needs diapers.   It is normal with Dissociative Identity Disorder for a person to have at least some alters that were created during infancy or early childhood. Having been formed in order to store deeply disturbing memories that the child does not want, these parts often get completely cut off from the rest of the person and buried for decades, along with the memories. This denies these alters all opportunity to mature or develop in any way beyond the very early age at which they were formed. Obviously, this makes them no more morally perceptive or intellectually capable than a little child, even though they might have suffered horrors that make them far more sexually experienced than average children.   For observers, the main trap is not realizing how ‘young’ an alter is. Since alters are usually formed because of threatening circumstances instigated by people, it is not uncommon for them to feel the need to act tough in order to try to ward off people perceived to be a threat. If their terror-driven attempt at bluff is convincing, they will usually give the impression of being considerably more mature, confident and capable than they actually are.     Previous Understanding Wiped from Memory   As seems true of everyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder, Christine’s first alters were formed during childhood. Her later experiences, however, show how even alters formed during adulthood can, at least in some ways, be rendered less capable than a young child.   When Christine was a young mother in her early twenties and subjected to an exceptionally bitter and traumatic child custody court case, the part of her most often in control (and therefore most knowledgeable) suddenly disappeared and never returned for years, and knowledge of her entire past vanished with her.   This intelligent Christian woman was left with a new alter whose memory was so wiped that she had no idea of her birth name, her relationship with God or how to read and write. Forced to take control, the new alter was so traumatized that even when told her birth name, she would keep forgetting it. Gone also were a number of basic abilities Christine had previously had, such as normal depth perception, sequential memory and a geographical sense of direction. This part of her never regained these abilities although, nearly twenty years later, she eventually learned about Dissociative Identity Disorder, and alters have now resurfaced who can manifest these abilities when they take over the body. Some things, like reading and writing and a knowledge of God, were regained sooner, but only by this alter having to relearn them from scratch.     Defective Moral Training   Average children gain at least a rudimentary conception of right and wrong fairly early on but there is still much they have to be taught. In fact, much of the Bible would be redundant if what is right and wrong were intuitively obvious.   For specific examples of alters’ diminished responsibility I will sometimes draw from my webpage  Unwanted Sexual Cravings: Healing an Alter’s Dangerous Lust for Sex   These extracts appear in black to help you skip them if you have already read them. Here’s the first:   A child’s most trusted – and virtually sole – sources of truth and moral guidance are her parents and relatives, her school, and her church. From infancy, Violet had been sexually interfered with by her parents and grandfather. Additionally – although for years she had lost all memory of it – a satanic cult had brainwashed parts of her, using drugs, powerful Ritual Abuse techniques and, quite literally, demons. Moreover, this very cult had been in charge of her education and represented the church. Violet’s school was church-based and the satanic cult had full control of it. Her school teacher was the cult leader’s wife and joined him in the torture. The leader of the cult (called the priest, though it was not his church title) was both the school principal and the church pastor. The school janitor dressed up as Jesus and convinced the drugged, traumatized-out-of-their-minds children that he really was Jesus when he tortured and sexually violated them. Children usually regard their school teachers as infallible sources of truth and, in Violet’s school, pupils were regularly taught to sexually abuse each other.   As an inevitable consequence of all these influences, one of her alters ended up certain it was irrefutably true that sexually defiling vulnerable children was not just morally neutral but a necessary act of kindness, on par both with lovingly tending to a child’s scraped knee and with preparing children for life by teaching them to read and write.     Abnormally Limited Experience   It is possible, for example, for an alter who sees herself as fifteen years old and lives in the body of a forty-year-old, to have experienced the outside world for a total of only a few hours, and be deprived of all the understanding that the rest of her has accumulated.   Although certain alters might be more experienced, some have been unconscious, or unaware of the outside world, for nearly all of the person’s life. And even on the fleeting occasions they were allowed to relate to the outside world, it was in a very limited way, and always for the same purpose. It defies my imagination to grasp what it would be like to try to think with a mind that has been limited to such a miniscule experience of life.     Deceived   Even if blessed with a finely tuned ability to discern right from wrong (something few alters have had the opportunity to develop) the most moral person can be tricked into doing something that seems right but isn’t. In such a situation, a deceived person must be judged by entirely different standards. To make this moral point crystal clear, I have some scenarios for you to consider. No matter how unlikely most of them are, the mere fact that they are possible rams home the point.    It is wrong to knowingly lie; it is not morally wrong to say something untrue that you firmly believe is true.     It is one thing to grab a gun and deliberately kill someone; it is completely different to be told the gun has blanks and that you are rehearsing for a stage play.    Knowingly having sex outside of marriage is morally a world away from failing to resist someone’s sexual advances after being drugged and conned into believing you have married the person and that it is your marital duty to yield.   It is one thing to knowingly attract a crowd by stripping naked; it is quite another after being persuaded by a hypnotist that you are completely alone and about to have a shower.   It is morally reprehensible to judge someone guilty of sin without knowing precisely what the person believed he/she was doing. What makes this point so critical to our discussion is that alters are highly likely to be deceived.   Consider one of the implications that, until they heal, many alters are locked into the limited abilities that the person had as a child: children are easily deceived. They can avoid being gullible no more than they can avoid being less than 6 feet tall. Children are particularly prone to swallow whatever adults tell them. Traumatized children are even more vulnerable to deception. And alters having a more limited life experience than children of equivalent age makes them still more vulnerable. Moreover, abusers are evil manipulators who use deception as a primary tool of trade. For all these reasons, alters have almost inevitably been tricked – often in the most bizarre ways – and must be judged by different standards to people who realize the implications of what they are doing.   It happens so frequently that I now expect it, but I used to be astonished by what atrocious things alters could do while convinced they were helping. Once they discover their error they quickly change. Jesus works miracles and, except for God, no one is good. Nevertheless, for alters who seem pure evil to instantly change into beautiful people the moment they are told a few basic things, tells me that even earlier there was more good in them that I could ever have imagined.     No Choice   No rape victim physically overpowered by someone stronger is morally responsible for the sexual offence. Little children are easily overpowered. Moreover, there is a debilitating condition known as learned helplessness. Here’s how I have explained it elsewhere:   To restrain a baby elephant, circus trainers must chain it to a huge stake driven into the ground. When the baby grows into an adult, however, it is many times smarter and stronger. What trainers must then drive into the ground is just a tiny tent peg.   The baby had tried everything to break free. It had strained with all its might, pulling in every conceivable way, hour after hour, day after day. The huge stake refused to budge. So, rather than mindlessly keep trying to do the impossible, it did what at the time was the intelligent thing: it gave up trying.   The baby grew into a powerful beast. Convinced by bitter experience that whenever it is tethered there is no point trying to resist, it never bothered to determine whether anything had changed. So it suffers indignities, even though, if only it could grasp the fact, it could easily rip up the peg and trample those who sought to dominate it.   As an adult, it finds itself bound not by a stake but by a powerful psychological force.   Consider a little boy who is sexually molested, no matter how much he kicks, screams, cries, bites and struggles. And week after week this keeps happening. Eventually, when someone wants to defile him, he complies, not because he wants it, nor because he is weak, but because all his experience has told him over and over that resistance achieves nothing more than bashing one’s head against concrete.   There are times when you might not consider that boy to be literally in a hopeless situation but his situation is hopeless, in the sense that all hope has been beaten out of him.   Then there is another type of no-win situation alters are often tormented with. Abusers often convince alters that unless they do something morally objectionable, they will not merely be tortured, but someone else (either outside their body or another alter – they might not be able to distinguish) will be tortured or killed.   To crush their victims and compel submission, heartless abusers often forcibly subject children to moral dilemmas that would stymie keen adult minds, let alone traumatized children. And until current reality is explained to them, alters believe they are still in this morally unwinnable situation.     Too Traumatized to Think Straight   In addition to other handicaps, some alters are almost out of their mind with terror or emotional pain. We need only consider suicide, drug addiction, anorexia and other forms of self-harm to realize that emotional pain can drive one to almost unthinkable extremes.     Driven by Demons   The man with a legion of demons was out of his mind until Jesus delivered him ( Mark 5:2-5,15). Since abusers are particularly evil, it would hardly surprise if some of them were demonized and/or attracted demonic attention and transfer demons to victims. Some abusers compel certain alters to go through satanic rituals that the rest of the person may know nothing of until later in the healing process.   This is no reason for alarm. Once they understand, Christians can easily deal with the demonic. Nevertheless, it could be a reason for some alters having diminished responsibility until a part of the person discerns what is happening and takes a stand with Jesus against the demons.     Example   There are countless different possibilities. Here’s just one:   An alter gave every appearance of longing to have sex, and wanting to seduce me. This is because her only experience of life was of being severely beaten if ever she didn’t act that way. She had no idea that this happened decades ago and that she was now in an adult body and no longer compelled to have sex with every man she met and to pretend that she wanted it. Upon learning that I wasn’t interested, she was terrified because she was sure it meant she was about to be tortured for failing to seduce me. Once I explained that she was no longer obligated to pretend, she was very relieved and admitted that she did not want sex.     Final Thoughts   Who would be so foolish as to regard tiny children as morally accountable? Their inability is a fact of life, fully attested to in Scripture:   Deuteronomy 1:39   . . . little ones . . . who do not yet know good from bad . . .   Isaiah 7:16  But before the boy knows enough to reject the wrong and choose the right . . .     It takes more than mere physical growth to turn an infant into someone who is morally accountable. Time spent learning and interacting with people and with the world is critical. And this is often in surprisingly short supply for alters.   Alters are so good at hiding that most people take decades to know they have any alters and even then it is usually many years after discovering their first that they eventually discover every alter. So in most cases, the life experience of people with Dissociative Identity Disorder is divided between more alters than they currently realize. Consequently, each alter is likely to have had even less experience of life than these people suppose.   Until people are fully healed from Dissociative Identity Disorder, their brain is riddled with no-go zones, each of which is the exclusive domain of an alter. This means alters can access only a part of the person’s full intellect, and the result is very uneven.   The intellectual landscape of people with savant syndrome consists of one awe-inspiring mountain soaring above the lowlands of the rest of their mental capacity. In a certain musical, mathematical or some other ability, they are a genius but the rest of their intellectual powers languish under the weight of a developmental disability. Although extreme, this illustrates how ability in one area of life does not necessarily predict abilities in other areas, including one’s capacity for moral discernment. Until people or alters are fully known or understood, it is easy to misjudge them.   To quote another example given in  Unwanted Sexual Cravings: Healing an Alter’s Dangerous Lust for Sex :  For whatever reason or reasons, certain alters, despite later ending up quite intelligent, seem as if they are intellectually impaired or in a mental haze before beginning to heal. It took several of Violet’s alters, for example, quite a while to be taught the meaning of even fairly basic words, such as the word ‘safe’. I should point out that it took me a surprisingly long time to discover that I was not being as well understood as I thought and, even then, it was only because a more knowledgeable alter explained to me that others were having this problem. Conversing with anyone of such severe limitations is so foreign to us that we are strongly biased to presume alters are more capable than they actually are. Moreover, Dissociative Identity Disorder often compels alters to become adept at being thrown into situations they know nothing about and forced to give the impression they know what they are doing.   Even little children know what gender they are, know what they look like, know if key people in their lives are still around or have been gone for years, and know the difference between events they experienced ages ago and what happened yesterday. Many alters, however, are completely mistaken about such elementary matters, and some believe astonishingly bizarre things. Some have no idea that they are even human, but believe they are animals, aliens, stuffed toys, decapitated heads, or whatever. Some, even while talking with you, believe they are dead.   It would not only be ungodly but ridiculous and cruel for anyone so messed up to be held even to the same standards of accountability we would expect of little children. As explained, this does not mean an alter will forever remain so frazzled, but one cannot justifiably apply higher standards until after the alter catches up with reality.   Even without these considerations, however, the spiritual fact remains: to bask in the warmth of God’s approving smile, our own cold, judgmental attitude must thaw. This sobering reality leaves us with no wriggle room: we should neither despise nor resent any alter. If there are alters you find less than lovable, then you know neither them, nor God, nor even your failings, the way you should. In the eyes of the universe’s terrifyingly holy Judge, the most perverse, disgusting alters are so lovable that the glorious, eternal Son of God left heaven’s Throne to be tortured to death as a human sacrifice to forgive, dignify and cherish them for all eternity.   I get down on my knees and beg you to keep drawing closer to the heart of God, praying for revelation and spiritual transformation until you ache with love for the most obnoxious alters, seeing them as the all-knowing Lord of the universe sees them. Love “believes all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7, literal translation) means love chooses to believe the best of a person. To see through the eyes of love – the eyes of God – is to see everyone in the best possible light.

Healing an Alter’s Dangerous Lust for Sex This webpage is intended to provide comfort, support and insight into many people reeling in shock, bewilderment or guilt over discovering what they or a loved one has done. Of necessity, it will mention sexual matters but only with the purest motives. If you wonder whether it is appropriate for you to read it, I suggest you look at this first: Is this for you? Webpages or books empower you to absorb life-changing insights for little or no charge, and at your own pace and time of day, in the comfort, convenience and security of your own home. It might take years and thousands of dollars to gain the same help from, for example, a therapist. And not everyone has access to someone with the required understanding. Additionally, it is surprisingly easy to unexpectedly develop an unhealthy attachment or dependence upon a helper and, tragically, not every professional is as safe as they should be. There’s a downside, however. Articles cannot be personally crafted for you after devoting hours and hours of getting to know your needs and sensitivities. Even skilled therapists can occasionally slip up, although it is much less likely. For full healing, issues must be faced, but timing is important. It’s frustratingly easy to believe we are sparing ourselves by avoiding painful issues when, like avoiding an unpleasant dental visit, we are actually prolonging our agony and could be letting our predicament deteriorate even further. The webpage you have been led to might liberate you, transform you and usher you into fulfilment like nothing else ever has. Nevertheless, it is possible that you are not ready for some, or all of it. Is this your time? God only knows. And that’s perfect. You might not believe in God. But he believes in you. You might even be furious with the person you think God is, but he isn’t fazed: he knows it is just a tragic misunderstanding. The real God is kind and compassionate. He cares for you more than you can imagine, and he longs to help you. I am praying that you end up choosing precisely what will best speed your healing, and I suggest you join me by praying along these lines: Lord Jesus, if you are the ultimate healer and you know everything, you know exactly what this webpage contains and what will most help me at this precise moment. If I should skip some or even all of it, I look to you to make this abundantly clear to me. Otherwise, be with me as I read; giving me all the comfort, strength and understanding I need. Unless you feel a strong indication that you should not proceed, please proceed with the webpage. In  How Accountable are People with Multiple Personalities?  I expand on this statement: Although, with Dissociative Identity Disorder, instances of diminished responsibility often occur without having peculiar gaps in their consciousness, some people experience this. They occasionally have times of such little conscious control that they might as well have been sleepwalking. They have apparently been awake and actively doing things but when they finally become aware of their surroundings they have no idea what has happened in the previous minutes or perhaps longer. For some, it is so common that they accept it as a normal part of life. In that highly relevant webpage I focus on the issue of diminished responsibility, whereas this one deals with how this phenomenon can have upsetting sexual ramifications. My heart aches for people whose lives have been ripped apart by the shocking discovery that they, or their loved one or those they long to support, find themselves hounded by inappropriate sexual cravings that are alien to who they really are. Any of us can suffer alarmingly intense temptation in which sins we don’t want to commit feel terrifyingly desirable, but I refer to something deeper and more disturbing.  Then there are those who have been actually engaging in appallingly out of character sexual activity that for years either they had no conscious awareness had been happening or they had been quite unable to stop. They might, for example, hate sex and love God and have been utterly convinced they have always adhered to the highest, God-honoring sexual standards and be shaken to the core to one day be hit with irrefutable proof that for years they have been sexually promiscuous. Can people really be bewildered beyond words by discovering hither-to unknown passions that horrify them, or even be shocked to disbelief to learn that they have been actively involved in such behavior against their will or even without their awareness? Despite being ludicrously impossible for most people, there are rare individuals for whom it really happens, due to a perplexing survival technique of the mind initiated by childhood trauma. It is known to therapists as Dissociative Identity Disorder but better known as multiple personalities to the general public (though atrociously misunderstood by them). There are those who, through no fault of their own, have a part of them that wants what appals the rest of the person and even, in some cases, can override the rest of the person’s will and/or consciousness. The latter is a little like sleepwalking in which someone does complex things that the rest of the person has no idea ever happened. This is not some questionable excuse, spiritual weakness or lack of will-power, but a powerful psychological reality for certain people whose lives have been shattered by childhood trauma. Even the trauma is likely to be remembered only by part of the person. Because the trauma inflicted on the innocent is often sexual in nature, the unwanted behavior can be sexual. It is often solitary but it could – to the horror of the rest of the person – involve multiple partners or even molesting children. My inner being writhes in pain for everyone devastated by the unwanted – and sometimes even uncontrollable – sexual yearnings or behavior that can result from this little-understood affliction. What fires my heart-felt compassion is a glimmer of understanding of how precious and misjudged these dear people are. I write because, although the process is long and very taxing, healing can be found and what it requires is the opposite of what most people might expect. To make it just a little more personal, I sometimes write as if it were you, rather than someone you know, who has Dissociative Identity Disorder. For some readers this will be true but don’t feel left out if you are reading to support or understand someone else. On the contrary, I highly commend you. You should find this webpage extremely helpful. To further humanize this webpage, I feature – with her wholehearted approval – concrete, real-life examples from a woman I have called Violet. For complex reasons explained in a valuable webpage,  Sexual Abuse & Sex Addiction , it is tragically common for survivors of sex abuse to end up with powerful yearnings for certain unhealthy, or even dangerous, sexual highs. Moreover, being subjected to sex abuse as a child is often a cause of Dissociative Identity Disorder (also known as Multiple Personality Disorder). As I have already alluded, this response to childhood trauma significantly complicates matters because it renders it possible for part of a person to have cravings (or even act them out) while most of the person remains totally unaware of them. Each fractured, almost completely autonomous part of a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder is known as an alter. Ironically, not just alters who loathe sex, but also almost all alters who seem to crave sex, are victims of sex abuse. With alters, things are rarely as they initially seem. Even with many of those who apparently crave sex, if you get to know them well enough, you will discover they do not actually want sex at all. Instead, they tragically feel compelled to pretend they want it, or even to try to convince themselves that they do, in a pitiful attempt, either to cope with unavoidable abuse (which they might have ended years ago without them realizing it) or to cope with the resulting horrific flashbacks. Regardless of how it plays out, however, a large proportion of alters were created as a desperate attempt of people’s minds to mentally survive the trauma of being sexually abused. And this is particularly true of almost all alters who engage in embarrassing or even disgustingly inappropriate sexual behavior. You might currently have no recollection of having been molested, and you most likely do not yet know the full extent of what you suffered, because alters are formed for the specific reason of protecting you by keeping such horrors from your awareness. Until you discover exactly what atrocities they endured, it would be a grave injustice to prejudge these alters. Given the likelihood that the alters distressing you were sexually violated, I will set the scene by telling you of a simple but profound revelation that Flower, one of Violet’s alters, received. You will learn more about Violet as we proceed but I’d like us to start here because it shows how we should view not just alters we find easy to love but those we might initially be tempted to detest. This alter likes flowers so much that she named herself Flower. As is so tragically common, Flower was formed by someone devastating her and breaking God’s heart by sexually violating her. Some of Violet’s alters even worried they might be permanently sexually mutilated by the abusers using instruments on them. Flower was terrified of Jesus because one of her abusers used to claim to be Jesus. After a lot of coaxing and reassurance, she eventually spoke with the real Jesus. You might call that special encounter a vision but it was very real to her. Jesus gave her a stunningly beautiful dahlia flower and said what I believe to be true of all alters formed because of sex abuse: he told her she was like that particularly desirable flower. Jesus explained that dahlias of such staggering beauty do not occur naturally. They are formed only by years and years of selective breeding involving artificial pollination. This, of course, does not distress the plants but Jesus likened it to people forcing plants to have sex. God detests what sexual predators do, but Jesus was saying that, despite it all, the alters who result from this violation are especially beautiful to him and delight him, just as the exquisitely beautiful dahlia delighted Flower. The Holy One is angered and repulsed by people hurting and defiling children but, rather than the atrocities inflicted on them devaluing alters, it makes them, if anything, more precious and desirable in his eyes. This is the heart of God and should be the foundation of our attitude toward every alter, no matter how some of them might initially seem to us. As a beautiful baby starts life as a rather repulsive-looking foetus, not all alters seem beautiful at first but, if only we nurture them, their beauty will be manifested. Given how much every alter means to God, to get down on my knees and serve one is to worship God. The vilest of alters bears the image of God and is so infinitely precious that the Eternal Son of God willingly sacrificed everything to make possible that alter’s restoration. No matter how depraved an alter might currently be, it is a sacred privilege and an honor of the highest order to do everything I can to encourage, support and serve him/her. Anyone failing to understand this does not know God as he ought. To my shame, I confess that ridding myself of ungodly self-righteousness and a judgmental attitude toward people immersed in deliberate sexual sin has been a ridiculously long journey. I started early but ugly remnants lingered for years. If the Holy One loves those who are currently defiled, how dare I act more ‘righteous’ than him! What an insult to God! My attitude rendered me at least as worthy of God’s wrath as the vilest offender. Indeed, given my insights into God, humanity’s Judge had every right to hold me more accountable. My driving passion is to edge you closer and closer to loving alters as God loves. This is my obsession because not only does acting like God exalt a person, love of divine proportions works the miracles you need. It transforms evil into good. It heals and empowers, whereas resentment and suppression perpetuates fracturedness. Since “a house divided against itself will fall,” (Luke 11:17) and to kill alters (if that were even possible) would be the same as killing off chucks of your brain and reducing your intellectual capacity, healing necessitates turning enemies within you into friends; melting the hearts of inner opponents with the warmth of divinely inspired love.   Help & Inspiration From Someone Else’s Experience?   Your experience is unique. Nevertheless, I have carefully selected only those aspects of Violet’s story that are likely to be prove highly instructive for you. Here are examples of what Violet found within her: * A paedophile alter who was convinced that it is good to molest children and was eager to do so. * A lesbian alter determined to achieve her life goal of using a man to have a baby and then dumping him to enter into a permanent sexual relationship with a woman. * An alter who engaged in physical self-harm of a sexual nature. * An alter who kept deliberately sabotaging Violet’s earnest efforts to stop masturbating. * An alter committed to serving Satan and summoning demons who ruled over other alters, demanding that they engage in various sexual sins (this is not Jessie – an alter referred to later in this webpage – but the account appears at the end of the explicit record of my interaction with Jessie). * A demon (initially thought to be an alter) who molested Violet. Not only have each of these issues been resolved in Violet, I will detail how each transformation came about. You might have alters with other sexual problems – perhaps engaging in promiscuity behind your back, alters sexually molesting other alters, or something else that horrifies you – but the principles that changed Violet’s alters will also change yours. Violet is a middle-aged woman I have been daily supporting for quite some time. We live on opposite sides of the globe and have never met in person. Nevertheless, she has shared so much and so openly that I am sure I know her heart well. Perhaps you have not been addicted to sexual highs as she had been. Parts of you that have yet to reveal themselves to you, however, might have more issues than you currently realize. Violet’s experience with forgiveness is also more pertinent than it might seem. There are three types of forgiveness that are vitally important for our well-being: 1.  Being convinced that through Christ God has forgiven us 2.  Forgiving ourselves 3.  Forgiving others Years of counselling people has shown me that these three types of forgiveness travel together. Progress with any of them will aid progress with the others. Resenting alters who give us a hard time is as dangerously counterproductive as making an enemy out of the only person who can help us. Following Christ’s example, we need to honor and respect alters who gave us a hard time, and forgiveness is an integral part of this. For twelve heart-wrenching years, Violet unsuccessfully battled sex addiction. She joined a recovery group and witnessed many other people’s transformation, but her own victories were riddled with soul-destroying failures as she fought to break her slavery to porn, masturbation and fantasizing about rape. Not everyone who discovers highly sexual alters follows this path. Some are initially unaware of any sexual craving. You will discover enough points of contact with her experience and that of her alters, however, to make it valuable. She writes about her sex addiction: I told God my frustrations with always failing. He said, “I know, but my grace is sufficient here, too. Just keep confessing your sin and accepting my forgiveness. You will recover.” For twelve years that was all I heard about my recovery. Honestly, I felt so isolated from him that sometimes that I felt lucky to get even hear that much from him. I wondered if he even cared. I examined what little of my past I could remember and started healing from it. I remembered a small portion of the abuse of my father. One day he gave me a hundred swats with a belt on my bare bottom. In my ignorance, I thought this was bad but it certainly wasn’t abuse. When I finally figured out that it was abuse, I was floored. I had never thought in those terms. I began to hate my dad. But that felt awful too! Then I learned about forgiveness. Forgiveness isn’t about forgetting that a person hurt me. It’s about remembering that they hurt me but letting God deal with them and their sin while I set boundaries to keep myself safe. Because I chose to look at this part of my past I learned that if I can forgive and forgive and forgive, without my father ever asking for forgiveness, then God is willing to do that for me. So, even though I regularly lost the battle with addiction I continued to confess and accept forgiveness. Then I accepted my part in abusing my brothers and asked their forgiveness. Through grappling with this I learned that  nothing  is unforgivable. This helped me to confess my sin and accept God’s forgiveness more easily. It became a natural rhythm for me: I’d fight my sex addiction and lose. Then, in utter humility and contriteness, I’d ask for God’s forgiveness. It was miserable, but liveable. I looked at all the horrible lies I learned from my father such as being told I was worthless and a failure. One by one I went through the memories attached to these lies and little by little I began to see myself as worthwhile and capable and even loveable, despite still having no control over my sex addiction. Next, I looked at the religious abuse my father afflicted on me. He was a pro at using the Bible to tear me down. I couldn’t even read the Bible without it speaking condemnation to me. I was brought to my knees by the death of my father and my being diagnosed with the same heart condition that lead to his death. I ended up at a church retreat. It was here that things came to a head. I told God, “I don’t believe you love me. You talk to so many other people but you don’t talk to me. You hate me. But life without your love is worthless. I will no longer not seek you. You must find me. Unless you personally tell me today that I am precious, I will kill myself in the morning. I am done living life without you in it.” God made himself abundantly clear that day and he called me precious. The man God used for that life-changing event also learned how my father had used the Bible as a weapon against me. He prayed for Jesus to remove the words that had been inappropriately implanted into my heart. From that moment on, the Bible became a living book. It spoke to me in comfort rather than condemnation. My confidence in Jesus’ love exploded. I continued to know absolutely no reason for my sex addiction. It was just there. Even being convinced of Jesus’ love didn’t make it go away. But I had worked so hard on what little I remembered. I had learned to forgive myself and others. I had learned that I wasn’t the scum of the earth and had developed an appropriate love for myself. I had learned to deal with stress. I had learned to set boundaries. I had learned that above and beyond anything else, Jesus loved me! It was not until less than a year ago that I finally discovered I have alters. The first alter I met was Rose. It was a very strange experience. She told me about my grandfather repeatedly molesting me. Since then, I’ve been finding more and more alters and, as story after story came out, learning more and more reasons for my problems with sex and how to resolve them. I have now met 84 alters and still more keep appearing. As they have revealed themselves to me, and allowed me to know the secret they have held on to, I have gained healing and so have they. Yes, each discovery is incredibly painful but we no longer fear pain. We face the pain together and it is facing that pain that has moulded us into a team and empowered us to gain what is now two months of hard-fought sexual purity. Now I know what Jesus meant when he said I would recover. I could not do it without my alters and they could not heal without me confronting the pain of their memories. I treasure every one of them above everything else in my life, other than Jesus. I want you to grasp the timescale: Violet was approaching her forties before she realized she had any alters. It was only then that she commenced her journey of discovering previously suppressed memories and so many parts of her that, for differing reasons, were feeding her sex addiction and continually sabotaging her earnest attempts to stop. The previous years of learning about forgiveness and deepening her relationship with God, however, formed a necessary foundation for what followed. Befriending and loving her alters, understanding their inner torment, comforting them, gently correcting their mistaken beliefs (most of which had been torturously pounded into them by abusers) and coaxing them to befriend Jesus has finally empowered Violet to take control of her life and end unwanted behavior. Whereas we might expect that suppressing highly sexual alters would give one mastery over one’s life, the opposite is true. The way to empower oneself is to empower one’s alters by respecting them, letting them vent, empathizing with them and, based on what they reveal, gently guiding them into truths that set them free. Over and over and over I find that alters who shame and even hurt other parts of the person might be confused and mistaken but they are sincerely doing their upmost to help, and a little love and instruction transforms them. For example. Grace, who sees herself as 14 years old, writes: I saw it as my job to override Violet’s wishes and masturbate regularly to keep our sexual desire and certain alters at bay. I had learned that if I masturbated my dad, he didn’t feel the need to molest me. I hated being molested, and by making him orgasm he’d leave me alone. I thought having an orgasm is what stopped people doing sexual things to another person. I utterly hated masturbating but I was terrified of what could happen if we stopped doing it. We had already been in some very bad and dangerous situations because of our sex addiction and I thought masturbation was needed to avoid this serious danger. When I began making myself known to Violet I expected her to hate me. After all, it is because of me that she was unable to maintain her attempts to stop masturbating. But she loved me and listened to me. I’d never had real love before. I’d only known about fake love. I learned from Jesus that having an orgasm solved nothing and even made things worse. So I stopped forcing us to have an orgasm. Now my job is to help those alters who feel the need to give us an orgasm. I lead a support group inside. In this group, alters talk through the things that have caused their sex addiction and they receive the love of their sister parts. Had it not been for my talking to Violet about my bad memories, I would not be doing this. I would still be making sure the body masturbated. Tracey, an older alter, provides another example of the role of love in changing alters with sexual issues. She writes: I was host [the alter most often in control] when we were in our early twenties. My life’s goal was to have sex with a man just to use him so that I could have a baby, then find a woman who loved me. Then we could marry each other and live happily ever after. Here’s how this became my goal: My expectations after graduating high school had been to go to college and marry a man and have children. So I found a guy and repeatedly had sex outside of marriage with him but I found no pleasure or connection with him. I couldn’t even orgasm with a man. I happened upon a relationship with a woman at the same time. I felt extreme pleasure and a strong connection with her because we could orgasm together. Since I wanted a child that had to be loved by parents who were connected to each other, I thought this meant I had to get a baby from a man and marry a woman. I loved this woman and would do anything for her; sometimes even risky things like sex and nudity in public. Then, one day, she tired of me and kicked me out. My world fell apart and I retreated inside to hide. After a while, however, I began to take over the body again. I wanted my lover back. But she had rejected me. So I started searching for another woman. When I first met Violet I attacked her. I hated her. I thought she was keeping us ugly by the way she dressed and behaved and that this was why I couldn’t attract a lover. My plan was to prevent her from being host and take over so that I could fulfil my dream. I thought that then I’d be safe. But Violet worked with me, even though I asked her to do horrible things. She wanted me to talk to Jesus. That made me laugh. I’m stronger than Violet. She can’t make me do anything. But she never tried. Instead, she made a deal with me: she’d take a shower everyday as I wanted, regardless of the eczema that would be aggravated, and I’d spend twenty minutes in the same room as Jesus, without even having to talk to him. I agreed. I didn’t think she’d actually follow through, but she did! So I glared at Jesus for twenty minutes and he looked genuinely pleased to be with me. That shocked me. Then Violet wanted me to read one of Grantley’s articles about Jesus’ love. My response was, “HELL NO!” Violet was not put off. She asked me what deal we could make that would help me read that article. Knowing Violet’s hatred of our sex addiction, I said, “You watch porn and masturbate and I’ll read your *!@%# article.” She looked at Jesus who, to my utter shock and amazement told her, “I know you hate it but my grace is sufficient here, too.” I was floored further when Violet, fighting back tears, agreed. [I would be grieved – to say nothing of how God would feel – if any reader used this as an excuse for indulging in sin. Had Violet sought my input I would have strenuously advised her to resist Tracey’s request. But I was not consulted. I have always urged her to go to Jesus rather than to me and I have never known her to mishear him. This instance stretches to the limit my faith in Violet’s ability to always hear from him but a critical factor is that Tracey was powerful enough to override Violet and get her own way anyhow. Instead of acting like a wild cat viciously fighting a losing battle with a wolf, Violet was kind and gracious and it was this that eventually won Tracey over. – Grantley.] She did the deed and I read the article, part of which said, “We would be appalled if a man kidnapped a woman and raped and enslaved her because he claims he loves her, wants her as his wife and is convinced he can make her happy. It would be an immoral abuse of power, regardless of whether he used physical force or threats – in which case she would be conscious of the violation of her rights – or if he used drugs or hypnotism so that she is unaware that what is happening is against her will. Real love respects the desires of the beloved, no matter how much it clashes with the lover’s personal longings, and no matter how certain he is that the person would benefit from a lifelong intimacy with him.” I ran away after reading those words. I had just forced Violet to do the one thing she loathed and she had done it while in tears. Her pain was palpable. I was just like the man who raped the woman. But Violet had respected my wishes even though it hurt her to use our body that way. This was my first experience with real love. I figured out that day that this love is what I really wanted. My lover had never been like that. She just loved having sex with me. I decided to join the other alters and put away my desire to sleep with a man and marry a woman. If Violet had never let me work through my memories and feel the complete shame of having prostituted myself with others, I would probably still be trying to have sex with any and every man and trying to find love in all the wrong places. Jesus never fought me. He never pushed. But still he won me. When I compared the depths of his love to the shallows of my lover’s affection, the need for fake love went away. My lover only wanted the highs. But Jesus went through the highs and lows with me. My lover loved me for what my body gave her. But Jesus loves me for what he can give me. He loves me just to love me. My lover came to the point when she no longer wanted me. Jesus says, “You refresh me every day. How could I be without you?” The love I felt for my lover was nothing more than fake love born out of a desperate need to be loved. The need for imposter love disappears when the real thing comes. Jesus gave me the love I was searching for – and he did it without sex. My body still yearns for a sexual high but I can live without it. I have real love – not a sexual high masquerading as love. It changed every desire I had. Being connected with Jesus and all my sister parts has proven to me that connection isn’t about sex; it’s about being loved. So the connection I felt needed to exist between a child’s parents is not about sex but about being loved. I now see sex as like a lane on the multi-lane freeway of love. There are many other ways to be connected. If sex breaks down, there are always the other lanes. Moreover, Jesus has told me that marrying the man of his choice won’t be a problem sexually. Like it or not, your alters are an integral part of you. Releasing them from bondage will release you. Of critical importance is coaxing them to share their heart with Jesus and let him talk with them. Over and over and over, Violet’s alters have come to me with issues and – as is inevitably the case – the greatest breakthroughs always come when I finally get them to talk with Jesus about it. He is the one with all the wisdom and all the answers. He not only brings encouragement like no other person and knows precisely what to say and the perfect way to communicate it but, even more importantly, he alone offers unshakable security and has the infinite reserves of deeply personal love they desperately need. His uniquely warm, selfless, unconditional and dependable love fits everyone’s need, like the one key that fits a lock, and joyfully releases us to our full potential. He is the one who heals and fulfils. Anyone else is an inadequate, potentially dangerous substitute. A good therapist/counsellor is like someone desperate to return a lost child to its loving parent as soon as possible. Any other approach is equivalent to kidnapping the child. An Alter Too Evil to Love? Let’s get highly practical. You’re a highly moral person who detests child abuse even more than most people. What if a previously unknown alter emerged from within you who is alarmingly strong and is determined to molest children? What if this part of you had not only been stripped of morality by a skilled paedophile, but she craved to be a sexual offender and was hell-bent on acting on her yearnings the first opportunity she got? Violet found herself in this appalling situation. And I had to counsel her. To protect your sensitivities I will omit details here but in another webpage the privilege is available of reading word for word this alter’s private conversations with me so that you can see precisely what it took to bring her to the point of sincerely wanting never again to molest children. Confidentiality is critically important and this revelation is, of course, made only with the alter’s full approval. Violet’s alter with atrocious cravings was a child called, for the sake of these webpages, Jessie. The sexual crimes she yearned to impose on real children appalled and disgusted me. Filled with virtually uncontrollable lust, Jessie was stubbornly adamant that for her to sexually interfere with innocent, vulnerable little children and training them to seduce and molest other children was not only the ultimate pleasure but is morally good. No matter how sickened I was by Jessie’s views, however, and how much her views were at enmity with my own heart, God expects us to love our enemies. Moreover, in  Sexual Abuse & Sex Addiction  I provide a number of biblical examples of Jesus befriending, comforting and even defending sexual offenders. Furthermore, Jessie was not even an enemy. She was a highly confused, cruelly tricked, part of a woman I respect. Although in an adult’s body, Jessie’s understanding was less than that of a little child. A child’s most trusted – and virtually sole – sources of truth and moral guidance are her parents and relatives, her school, and her church. From infancy, Violet had been sexually interfered with by her parents and grandfather. Additionally – although for years she had lost all memory of it – a satanic cult had brainwashed parts of her using powerful Ritual Abuse techniques (and, as proved later, aided by very real demons). Moreover, this very cult had been in charge of her education and represented the church. Violet’s school was church-based and the satanic cult had full control of it. Her school teacher was the cult leader’s wife and joined him in the torture. The leader of the cult (called the priest, though it was not his church title) was both the school principal and the church pastor. The fake Jesus was the school janitor. Children usually regard their school teachers as infallible sources of truth and, in Violet’s school, pupils were regularly taught to sexually abuse each other. As an inevitable consequence of all these influences, little Jessie ended up sure it was irrefutably true that sexually defiling vulnerable children was not just morally neutral but a necessary act of kindness, on par both with lovingly tending to a child’s scraped knee and with preparing children for life by teaching them to read and write.   Compassion? Reasons for alters having diminished responsibility go way beyond some being created at a young age and never allowed to mature or develop beyond that. Even during adulthood, for example, alters can be formed that have had totally erased from their memory all the person’s previous experience and knowledge (even of their Christian beliefs and ability to read). In fact, reasons for alters deserving not our judgment but deep compassion are so diverse and extensive that although I began listing them here, to do justice to the subject I needed to devote a webpage to it:  Diminished Responsibility How Accountable are People with Multiple Personalities? Despite later ending up quite intelligent, some alters seem as if they are intellectually impaired or in a mental haze before beginning to heal. It took several of Violet’s alters quite a while to be taught the meaning of even fairly basic words such as the word ‘safe’. I should point out that it took me a surprisingly long time to discover that I was not being as well understood as I thought and, even then, it was only because a more knowledgeable alter explained to me that others were having this problem. Conversing with anyone of such severe limitations is so foreign to us that we are strongly biased to presume alters are more capable than they actually are. Moreover, Dissociative Identity Disorder often compels alters to become adept at being thrown into situations they know nothing about and forced to give the impression they know what they are doing. Although some alters are more experienced, some have been unconscious nearly all of the time, and even on the fleeting occasions they were allowed to function, it was in a very limited way and always for the same purpose. It defies my imagination to grasp what it would be like to try to think with a mind that has had such a miniscule experience of life. So Jessie, totally naïve, brainwashed, and deprived of all other knowledge, understanding and opportunities to mature, literally did not know any better; bringing diminished responsibility to a new low. She simply needed instruction, even if I grew frustrated and disturbed over how long it took for this information to impact her. There is another, entirely different, set of reasons for alters deserving our deep compassion despite seeming so vile as to disgust us. After the events detailed in the webpage about Violet yet another of her alters appeared. I was going to include the details in that webpage but, instead, here is a mild and summarized version of what happened. I do not want you to miss it because it demonstrates how alters are typically nothing like the depraved beasts we might hastily judge them to be. Violet was battling an unusually strong yearning to masturbate, but to honor God and protect herself and her alters, she was determined not to yield, no matter how excruciatingly intense the cravings were. She added that if she caved in to the temptation:  . . . I would be in serious danger of demonic attack. I can’t afford that, with all my littles [  young alters  ] around. My relationship with Jesus would be compromised and I’d have to look into His amazing eyes and apologize, knowing that I treated this temple he gave me as garbage. I can’t do that to him or me. I can’t afford to lose my virginity again. I won’t do that, no matter how much my body screams at me. I just won’t! Then an alter, using crude language, tried to seduce me. Upon my refusal, the alter complained bitterly and tried even harder to seduce me. The type of sex she was begging for was likely to be painful, especially for a child. I questioned her as to why she would want it. In addition to saying it is what she needs, she replied, “I love pain! Especially when it gives me such pleasure.” I told her that both Violet’s refusal and mine were because we loved and respected her. She denied this and said that Violet did not love her. She complained that she had caused Violet’s sexual cravings and that Violet had considered her to be a demon and treated her accordingly. I informed Violet. Unaware that an alter had been involved, she apologized to the alter. Her fellow alters and I explained to this alter that she was now free from her abusers and so no longer compelled to obey them. Upon hearing this, she instantly changed; filling with shame and remorse over having talked dirty and trying to seduce me and giving Violet sexual cravings. It turned out that her abusers had given her the task of pleasing certain paedophiles who would pay money for a child who talked dirty and pretended to want to be defiled. Her apparent lust and vile language were nothing but an act – something she found abhorrent but felt compelled by her abusers to do; knowing that if she failed to seduce or failed to make certain alters crave sex, she (and perhaps other alters) would be severely punished with still more sexual torture. There is another side to this alter’s story. It is significant because it reveals yet another set of reasons for alters having severely diminished responsibility and for us filling with compassion for them. I will save this, however, for later in the webpage. When communicating with any alter, it is critically important to die to personal prejudices and be gracious, respectful and friendly. In all that we do we must be Christlike. Jesus is not coldly clinical and every Christian should have deep compassion for those caught up in sexual sin. I have seen over and over and over how astonishingly powerful Christlike love is in transforming alters who have ungodly attitudes. So, as is my custom when communicating with an alter, in my e-mails to Jessie I frequently used tender terms, such as often slipping “my friend” into what I said to ease the blow of some of the frank things I needed to say. Additionally, I often closed my e-mails with “Your friend, Grantley” (I never refer to myself as “Uncle”) or something similar. These endings have been omitted from the next webpage to lessen your reading. Had Jessie perceived me as harsh or judgmental, she would almost certainly have terminated communication with me, thus denying me the opportunity to help her. My counselling style was not some act, however. I keep praying that God give me his heart – his attitude to everyone and everything. There is sure to be plenty of room for improvement but our Lord has graciously given me genuine compassion for those he loves, regardless of how twisted their views are. Before moving on I should briefly address the big temptation to think that although we should be kind to others, we have the God-given right to despise part of ourselves. As I have written elsewhere: You and your alters might share the same body but this fact in no way gives you license to be less than loving toward them, any more than a husband and wife being one flesh (Mark 10:7-8) gives anyone permission to mistreat his wife. On the contrary, sharing the same body increases your responsibility to be kind to your alters, just as being physically one increases a husband’s obligation to be tenderly compassionate toward his partner. In fact, the Bible insists that for a man to ride roughshod over the feelings of the woman he is one with will threaten his relationship with God (1 Peter 3:7). There is a huge complication in showing love to someone else’s alters, however. Healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder takes years, and so a faithful counsellor needs to be around for a very long time. Moreover, alters are desperate for love, and especially for a parent figure. This makes alters highly vulnerable to forming dependencies and attachments to counsellors that are unhealthily strong. Moreover, since such a long time period is involved, there is a significant possibility of unforeseen circumstances eventually preventing a counsellor from being able to maintain the relationship. Should this happen, the greater the dependency and attachment, the more devastating the resulting setback will be. So I insist that alters bond with Jesus, not me. He alone is the perfect therapist and able to be present 24/7 and can guarantee never to burnout, get sick or die. He alone can hug them and play with them in a completely safe and non-sexual way. Little alters must always make him their Daddy and never me. And the goal must be for them to feel closer to each other, than to any counsellor. This is vital for their healing, since they all share one brain and I am not part of that brain. Both types of bonding – bonding with Jesus and with each other – foster healing and have no downsides. I am delighted that almost all of Violet’s alters call her “Momma” and call Jesus “Dadda,” and this is not mere terminology but their heartfelt cry. Jesus has often told her alters they can choose their daddy. After a little thought, each has independently decided that Jesus would make a far superior daddy to me. I admit to sometimes feeling a twinge of pain about this but I know it must be this way. Showing sufficient warmth and tenderness without unhealthy bonding is a difficult balancing act that I’m sure to sometimes get wrong. It was with considerable reluctance that I gave in to the pleas of Violet’s alters that they call me Uncle Grantley. I have never allowed anyone else’s alters to do this. However, they felt uncomfortable about calling an adult by his first name and I felt that calling me Mr. Morris was too cold. When Jessie began telling me about what she wanted to do to children, I was not just horrified but stunned. I had not seen it coming. It was utterly out of character for Violet. I had always considered her alters to be utterly trustworthy with children. When some of her alters had tried to seduce me, there was not the slightest chance of anything materializing because I was as unmoved as stone. It was far more alarming when defenceless children were the target. More worrying still was that, although childless herself and she had temporarily lessened her contact with children, Violet’s passionate plans for the future involved being a caregiver to an unusually large number of children. I would be disturbed if Jessie had merely lusted after children but, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Jessie had an almost uncontrollable yearning to seduce and molest little children with whom Violet, even now, was sometimes alone. Violet is a woman of iron will, utterly devoted to doing things God’s holy way. This was good, but not enough. As already indicated, most people with Dissociative Identity Disorder have alters who, at least occasionally, slip out and do something contrary to the host’s knowledge and/or wishes. In contrast to most people, however, Violet had developed several layers of unusually effective ways of preventing wayward alters from taking over. This is a very difficult thing to achieve. Nevertheless, the stakes were suddenly higher than I ever imagined. If, for a moment, Jessie did something inappropriate behind Violet’s back, Violet’s entire future would be ruined, to say nothing about the harm inflicted on the children. Thankfully, alters with views very different to their hosts can usually be won over fairly quickly when shown love and respect, paired with patient instruction. Jessie took more convincing than I expected. I kept trying to find something that would undermine her certainly that she was right. I knew that this would then open her up to what I was saying. It took a while to get there, however.   Helping You Help Alters Since every alter is unique, the help you offer an alter must be tailored for that specific alter. So in guiding you I can only provide examples that, no matter how illuminating and encouraging, cannot be slavishly followed but must be modified according to the needs of each alter. To further assist, however, I can outline some general principles in supporting highly sexualized alters. The examples appear later in links but here are some general principles: Encourage Alters to Dialog with You But Do All you Can to Control their Access to the Body and to Other Alters It is vital to remain in communication with alters. This is the only way to help potentially dangerous alters and if you lose contact with them (because, for example, they don’t see you as being friendly) they will not only remain dangerous and in needless distress, they could at some time escape your control and devastate you. On the other hand, until you can convince such alters to change, you need to remain hypervigilant to ensure they do not take over the body and create havoc. Do whatever is feasible to physically prevent opportunities for wrongdoing. This might involve such things as changing a password to a critical Internet account or even changing a phone number, or isolating yourself from people, or, until the crisis is over, locking yourself inside your house at night and hiding the key. You might also need strong, trustworthy alters taking shifts for around the clock monitoring to prevent the alter from taking over the body. If only one alter is powerful enough to restrain the errant alter, other trustworthy ones can still act as sentries to wake up the powerful alter if needed. Be Christlike I earlier explained the importance of being kind, warm, loving, patient and gentle with alters. If they are your own alters, you have the advantage of not having to avoid them becoming too bonded to you, nor having them too dependent upon you. It will be good for both you and them, however, to keep helping alters grow stronger and to selflessly teach them skills you have. Alters are a part of you, and the more empowered they are, the more empowered you are.   Encourage Alters to Connect with Jesus Always remember that Jesus is unquestionably the best friend, companion, advisor, healer, therapist and source of comfort that any alter – or anyone else – could ever have. Alters typically have remarkable interactions with Jesus in which he speaks to them with such clarity that I often have to try not to be envious. Alters fearing the real Jesus forces us to try to fill in the vacuum until alters finally overcome their needless fear and go direct to the One they need. I find it torturously frustrating trying to act like a counsellor/therapist. I stumble around in my inept, clumsy way, when Jesus, the perfect therapist – and everything else alters need – is eager to do so much more for them than any therapist could ever achieve. The frustrating obstacle, however, is that alters have often gained a distorted impression of Jesus that keeps them aloof from him. Many alters have been tricked by their abusers into thinking that Jesus is scary. Abusers often ludicrously and blasphemously claim or imply that God approves of their atrocious acts, and alters swallow their poisonous lie. As already mentioned, some abusers even dress up as Jesus and pretend to be him while torturing people. So work hard on gently correcting any misconceptions or fears alters have about Jesus, and bring them to him as soon as possible. Monitor what happens, however, because, although it is rare, it is not impossible for alters to think they are relating to Jesus when it is an impostor. It is possible, for example, to encounter an alter who is convinced that he/she is the false Jesus and fool other alters. Don’t Focus Exclusively on One Alter In the webpage about Jessie, I included messages from Violet and some of her other alters, and if you read the full text you will see how relevant they were to helping Jessie. Here are some examples of the impact of other alters: Other alters were able to let me know the extent to which they could keep Jessie from acting out her desires. Jessie had enormous difficulty in breaking her emotional entanglement with the priest. If other alters showed her deep love and acceptance it would help break this bondage, whereas the opposite would happen if alters spurned Jessie. This is an example of how critically important the attitude of other alters can be. Sometimes they provided vital clues as to how to help Jessie. It is not unusual for other alters to be able to provide deeper insights into beliefs, attitudes, feelings etc of the alter you are trying to help. Often alters are dominated by stronger alters who are determined to keep the alters doing undesirable things. It turned out that Jessie had an alter putting pressure on her, but it took a long while for this to become evident. Keep Looking for Lies Alters Believe There are many lies that alters tend to believe that keep them feeling weak and hopeless. For example, they might believe they are unforgivable or useless or never able to escape the abuser’s power over them, or that the abuser’s threats can still be enforced when they cannot. Upon identifying lies we need to apply the next point. Try to Find One Thing that Proves to the Alter that He/She is Mistaken It often only takes the exposing of one misconception to make an alter willing to accept that everything else the alter believes might also be mistaken. If an attempt fails to crack an alter’s certainty that his/her view of reality is accurate, you will need to keep prayerfully searching for something else that achieves this. Here are examples of things that might work: ♥ The calendar year Sometimes proving to alters what year it is shocks them into realizing how little they know. Discovering how mistaken they have been in this regard suddenly makes them open to believing other things you tell them. Of course, this only works for alters who have been inside for so long that many years have passed without their awareness. This is quite common, however. ♥  The fact that years have passed without the abuser reclaiming them Continually pressing this point proved quite effective with Jessie. ♥  Discovering how loving, gentle and trustworthy Jesus is An alter accessing the memories of fellow alters or seeing another alter interact with Jesus might help with this. ♥ Discovering that Jesus is more powerful that the evil forces behind the abuser. ♥  Helping an alter see how much abusing sex hurts one or more other alters. ♥ Helping an alter see how at odds his/her views are with that of the general public.   Keep Persisting In what I initially thought would be an act of kindness by lessening your reading time, I toyed with the idea of providing in the next webpage only the highlights of my interaction with Jessie. Upon reflection, however, I decided you would be better served by seeing how prolonged the full process was and how at certain points it can be tempting to think the situation impossible and give up trying to persuade the alter. Breakthroughs await those who don’t give up.   The Other Side I promised you more about the alter behind Violet’s extreme sexual arousal and that it would reveal even more about the astonishing extent to which alters have diminished responsibility and are truly worthy of our compassion. I have left this account until now, because not only is it more intelligible after having explained more about Violet, I worry about tiring some readers, but a brief summary might needlessly alarm some by firing their imaginations into overdrive. It would be easier on such readers for them to know the relatively gentle way that events unfolded. This alter had been called Dirty Whore by her abusers. Now that she was being helped, she changed her name to Ardyce (meaning blooming field). She was still so distraught, however, that she yearned to die. She had previously believed that by sexually arousing alters she was making it easier for them to endure unavoidable rapes but now that she realized how much some alters hated those feelings, she was haunted by guilt over it. Added to this was guilt over trying to tempt me and all the things she had been forced to do to be seductive to men. Further compounding her crushing guilt was her awareness that even now Violet was still being tormented by extreme sexual arousal. Ardyce felt she was the cause but found herself unable to stop it. Yet another reason for her wanting to die was that she was plagued by a gnawing, unfillable emptiness inside her. It was obvious, both to other alters and to me, that Ardyce desperately needed Jesus’ help. The problem, however, was that she was mind-numbingly terrified of him. This was psychologically inevitable. After all, on numerous occasions a man she had at the time been convinced was Jesus had sadistically raped her. Now, whenever she looked in Jesus’ direction, instead of seeing him, she was assaulted by a flashback in which she would not only see a man brutally raping her but was overwhelmed by feeling the associated distress and excruciating physical pain. In fact, her terror grew because she witnessed Jesus’ power when another alter was being harassed by demons and Jesus protected them all by sending the demons fleeing. All her previous experiences of people with power were of people who used their superior strength to inflict themselves on her. She wrote to me explaining this, concluding with: “I can’t talk to Jesus if I’m always crying every time I look at him. Are you sure he would never hurt me? Not ever? Not even once? If you say yes to all of this then I will try to talk to him, even if all I do is cry and shake. I assured her, and added that even if she could not stop crying she could still hear Jesus. Later, she wrote: Uncle Grantley, I went and talked to Jesus. Well, at first I didn’t do any talking. I just couldn’t. I mostly just sat on the step and crunched myself up as much as possible. I was too afraid even to look up. Jesus didn’t even come near me. I think I would have split [  involuntarily created another alter  ] if he did. He was just so terrifying. I shook all over and wailed a lot. Utterly terrified, I just cried and cried. I couldn’t stop. Then he talked to me, but I could just barely hear him. He said that he was going to throw me a blanket that would cover me and help me calm down. It wasn’t fuzzy, which was good. I hate such things touching my skin. It was a nice cotton blanket. It was like a cone of protection around me. Nothing could touch me. I still cried a lot but I didn’t shake as much, and I didn’t wail. Then Jesus said, “Oh, my dear child. You are so precious to me. Your tears break my heart. My dear sweet child, I know you saw my power. Did it scare you?” I nodded my head. Uncle Grantley, it was terrifying to see his power and there he was, just a few yards from me. Then he said, “You heard a song tonight that said my love was furious. Momma [  Violet  ] told you of a time when your dad fought off a Vietnam vet to protect someone who wasn’t even family. His love was furious at that moment. But that fury was pointed at the man who would harm another person. My furious love is like that. You are my child. You are my pride and joy. I will use my furious love to protect you. But I also have sweet love. My sweet love is never pointed away from you. I am always with you, lavishing my sweet love on you. Now I want to use my sweet love for you. I know you are scared to look at me. You can only see the evil that those men perpetrated against you. Would you like to see me, but not the evil things those men did to you?” I thought about that for a second. That was actually a hard choice, Uncle Grantley. I know that you and Momma and everyone else say Jesus is good and loves me and wants to help me and all that, but just thinking about something that good is hard for me to believe and it hurts when I try to believe it. But, I want to be rid of all this pain more than be afraid of it. So I decided to give him a shot. If you guys are right then I would stop feeling all the pain but if you were wrong, it wouldn’t matter because I already wanted to die. Adding just one more pain couldn’t make things worse. So I nodded my head. He said, “Okay, my sweet. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to wipe your tears away. That means my thumbs are going to touch your eyes and cheeks gently. I will not hurt you. Remember, you can call Momma if needed, okay? You are safe with me.” He moved really slow and he was so gentle. He has all that power but he was so slow and gentle with me. I was amazed and confused. How does power do anything gentle? Then he came over and wiped my tears from my cheek and spread them on my eyes. When he touched me I felt so dirty and worthless and I shook all over the place. Then he and sat down, far away and said, “Would you please try opening your eyes to look at me? I breathed deep, opened my eyes and looked at him. The pictures of all that evil were still in front of me but now I could see him behind it all. He said, “Are the memories totally gone now?” “No,” I said, “but I can see you now.” “Perfect!” He replied, “Now for step two.” Then he looked at me and said sternly, “Come out now and give an account for your actions.” I was shocked. Why was he talking this way to me? But then this creature stepped out from my skin and said, “Please, don’t hurt me, Eternal One. I’m just following orders. What would you have me do?” Jesus replied, “Give an account for what you have done inside this child of mine. Then you may go and never return.” The creature hissed, “I leaked desire to those around her. She was the instrument to ensure every part’s slavery to sex. I completed her inability to see You so that she would never seek Your face. May I go now?” Jesus commanded, “You and your minions are to never return to any person inside this body. You and your minions are not to disturb their relationship with me. On the day you do that I will personally destroy you. Leave my daughters and sons and never return.” Then this dark creature rushed away. I looked Jesus in the eye. All the evil was all gone. I could see Jesus clearly. It worked! It worked! Jesus said to me, “Daughter, I know all of your fears. I know what those men did who caused extreme destruction in your life. But I am the Great Restorer. Unlike an earthly restorer, I can make things better than they were at first. I want to do this for you. Will you allow this? Will you let me into your skin to fix what the demon did inside you?” “Will it hurt?” I asked. “No,” he said, “it will be a seal on you so that nothing may enter you again. It will bring life and peace, not pain and fear. Will you allow me inside?” Uncle Grantley, you and everyone else were right. He only helps. His love is sweet and furious. Even demons cannot escape his commands. I decided to trust him, even though I was still afraid. I nodded my head and he asked me to open my mouth. So I did. He put his open hand in front of his mouth. Then he blew over his hand like he was blowing me a kiss. I couldn’t see anything but when his breath entered my mouth I could feel him enter me and there was a filling. He filled where I was empty and the pain of the hole in me left. I was complete. Uncle Grantley, I was complete. I can feel him in me and outside of me – both at the same time! I am completely surrounded by him. I don’t understand how a furious love can also be sweet. But I know it’s true because I’ve seen it and felt it. This is what I always wanted but never knew I wanted. Thank you for helping get me to this point. Thank you SO much!   Where to Next? The webpage introduced above is available, of course, but I draw your attention to milder options that you might consider reading first:  If you have not already read  Sexual Abuse & Sex Addiction , I strongly recommend doing so.

Unhealthy Cravings for Sex Understandably, sexual highs – regardless of whether they involve a partner – can be very addictive. In fact, sex is divinely designed to be so potentially addictive that it binds a couple to each for life.   We will discuss matters causing or contributing to sex addiction. This will not only aid our understanding but help us find ways to break the addiction.   Even when the memory is dismissed or suppressed, having been sexually interfered with is often a factor in sex addiction. Many who have suffered sexual abuse as children, don’t even think they are victims but think it was entirely their responsibility, since they were seduced, rather than had anything forced on them or because they enjoyed some of the feelings. For those who feel certain they have had no childhood sex experiences with another person, the following is a cut-down version of  Sexual Abuse & Sexual Addiction , trimmed of any reference to childhood sexual encounters with other people, and reorganized accordingly. If you have the slightest doubt, however, please read the full version.   ♦ There are Worse Things than Sex Addiction   Sex junkies – people trapped in the shame, defeat and depravity of sex addiction – not only have my deep compassion and respect but deserve everyone’s love. It is my hope that before completing this webpage you will not only have answers but will realize that the most depraved are not prostitutes, homosexuals, rapists, child molesters or those who sexually defile themselves with animals, but those who feel morally superior to them.   Consider the radical moralist to whom millions swear allegiance (and immediately ignore because his laser clarity cuts all of us down to size). “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you,” Jesus told the holier-than-thous (Matthew 21:31). Or, as Proverbs 30:12 puts it, there are “those who are pure in their own eyes and yet are not cleansed of their filth.”   It is as enticing as chocolate-coated poison to a starving man to seek to justify ourselves by thinking ourselves better than some. When dispensing the mercy that all of us so desperately need, however, God chooses those who position themselves on the bottom of humanity’s pile, whereas those who consider themselves better are left to rot in the stench of their own self-righteousness. God forgives according to how enormously we think we need forgiveness. Sadly, even those addicted to depravity can ruin their spiritual advantage by sneering at those hooked on other forms of depravity.   ♦ Things Causing or Contributing to Sex Addiction   I have known happily married people who are addicted to solo sex, despite having good sex with their partners and being able to get even more from their partners, if desired. I am sure it is likewise possible for people in good marriages to be addicted to sex with other partners. Almost inevitably, however, the addiction had its roots in things done earlier in life when they were lonely. Pornography and/or solo sex shape one’s sexuality in disturbing ways In an important article about this (there’s a link to it at end of this webpage) I wrote: Resorting to porn and/or masturbation, to tide you over until you have a sexual partner, is like taking drugs to dull the pain of loneliness. When you find someone, loneliness might vanish, but the craving for drugs will remain. Even if you heroically break the habit, you will most likely for the rest of your life find yourself haunted by the occasional longing for the unique sensations the drugs produced. Of course, the more you had allowed yourself to become addicted, the more it will hound you later in life. So it is with porn and/or masturbation. So even if you feel deeply loved now, feeling unloved probably originally contributed to you becoming addicted, and your changed situation will make breaking the addiction significantly easier. Since feeling unloved is such a huge factor in sex addiction, it is appropriate to start here but you can, of course, skip this section if it no longer applies to you.   ♦ Feeling Unloved   We are discussing different factors in sex addiction but this basic human need for unconditional love and acceptance is one that we will keep finding ourselves having to return to. I beg you not to despair, however. No matter how spurned and repulsive you might feel, the love you so urgently need is surprisingly available and we will explore this before long. To anyone enslaved by sexual highs and lows, the merest mention of genuine love can be like tormenting a starving man with the smell of food he is prevented from tasting. The stubborn fact remains, however: as fish were made for water, we were made for an ocean of unconditional, God-sized love. And to be deprived of it drives us nearly insane. Two psychologists, Dr. R. Earle and Dr G. Crow, wrote a book about sex addiction. Poignantly, they titled the book,  Lonely all the time  . In it, they wrote, “Believe it or not, the driving force behind most sex addicts’ compulsion is a desperate need for love.” Every child has a compelling need for non-sexual hugs and parental love and approval. An ancient proverb has disturbing implications for any child starved of such love: “. . .  to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet.” (Proverbs 27:7). People deprived of genuine love during their critical developmental years are not only highly vulnerable and a prime target for predators when they are children but, unless they find healing, they are likely to carry throughout their adult years that gnawing ache inside that makes them vulnerable.   ♦   Abysmally Low Self-Esteem It breaks my heart that low self-esteem can reach the extreme of not only making people feel they are little value other than as a sex object but even that acting as a sex object is their only reason for existing.   A sex addict told me, “I have discovered that whenever I crave sex I am feeling three things: worthless, scared and hopeless.”   One sex addict, who even went to the extreme of unsuccessfully trying to seduce me, her counsellor, said that succeeding in seduction gives her a feeling of power. In other words, it gives her the temporary high of boosting low self-esteem.   Among the things that make love so critically important is that selfless love and self-esteem travel together. Whenever we are robbed of love, self-esteem is mugged. To understand, let’s consider verbal abuse.   The greatest tragedy of being subjected to verbal abuse as a child is that even when victims eventually grow up and leave the people who used to put them down, they typically continue through life verbally abusing themselves and putting themselves down and perpetuating their crushed self-esteem. Abusing themselves becomes an addiction that they desperately need to break and yet this is frustratingly hard to do. Abuse has become a way of life for them and they have come to believe the lie that they deserve it.   Self-loathing follows selfishness, like pain follows a beating. This holds true regardless of whether we are the victims or the perpetrators of selfishness.   What keeps many from soaring above the moral squalor in which they wallow is that they mistakenly think they have nothing to lose. They fall for the lie – often deliberately reinforced by their abuser – that they are already in humanity’s gutter, the lowest of the low, shattered beyond repair, defiled, despised and destroyed. Imagining that no one believes in them and that they are trash, they conclude that it is therefore appropriate to treat themselves as trash and even pretend to like it.   But someone does believe in them, and it isn’t just someone, but the King of glory, the Lord of heaven, the God of the impossible. The holy, love-struck one who sees astonishing potential in them is the ultimate rescuer and restorer, whose tender kiss transforms slimy toads trapped in a sewer; turning them into regal beings admired by all of heaven.   This is no fairy tale; it is as real as the blood, sweat and tears of the eternal Son of God whose tortured frame writhed on the cross for you. The implications are stupendous and life changing. The Holy One traded places with you, suffering the ultimate humiliation so that you could enjoy the ultimate exultation. Then, on your behalf, he burst through the grave so that his glorious destiny could be your destiny.   No matter how defiled, rejected and hopeless you feel, you have a secret lover, completely different from anyone you have ever known. There is someone who believes in you; someone who yearns to give and not take. He not only spends his life on you and gives all that he has, he has no needs of his own. He will never defile or exploit you. He is perfect for you. He is heavenly. He is divine. No matter what anyone else thinks or has told you, the exalted Lord of the universe, the Judge of all humanity, counts you worthy.   It is agonizingly hard for many of us to realize that we can be treasured and loved for who we are, not merely for what we do. As unbelievable as it might seem, however, this is precisely how God sees you and he is always right.   ♦  Despising Oneself Most of us have a tendency to be annoyed with ourselves. And this can aggravate addictions.   Even without multiple personalities, every one of us has something approaching this condition. The apostle Paul, for example, devoted nearly an entire chapter to the frustration of part of him desperately wanting to do what is right and another part of him wanting the opposite, thus creating an internal war (Romans 7).   Most of us think it must be godly to despise or even hate any part of us that craves sexual sin. The dilemma is that it must surely be counterproductive to further starve of love a part of us whose undesirable cravings have been driven or inflamed precisely by being starved of unconditional love. But is it Christlike to hate anyone? Wasn’t Jesus repeatedly slammed by religious people for the way he loved sinners? Of course, our holy Savior never encouraged sin, but he continually poured out love on those depraved and enslaved by sin; befriending them, healing them and defending them from those who sneered at them.   As Romans five points out, Christ died not for the righteous – by God’s perfect standards, there are none – but for the ungodly, and, as 1 John declares, the reason we now love is that God loved us first – when all of us had reason to be disgusted with ourselves.   Jesus emphasized the importance of us loving our enemies because that’s the very nature of God (Matthew 5:44-45). So if the part of us that craves sexual sin is our most dangerous enemy, then that is the very part on which we must particularly practice godliness. This is not, of course, to encourage sin but to saturate that part of us with unconditional love in the hope of nurturing repentance. In the words of Romans 2:4, “God’s kindness leads you toward repentance.”   Remember Zacchaeus, the money grubbing turncoat who extracted money from his fellow countrymen to finance the foreign army occupying the holy land. Above all the town’s dignitaries and spiritual leaders, the Messiah singled out that shunned, tree-climbing weasel for companionship. Everyone was disgusted by Jesus’ choice, but before the indignant protests had stopped echoing throughout the town, one cold heart had thawed and the person everyone had given up on was extravagantly repenting. He who had been despised and ostracized finally found someone who believed in him and showed him kindness. The result was astonishing (Luke 19:1-10).   No one needs such love, and will be transformed by it, more than sinners.   We might think it godlike to beat ourselves up, but it is actually the way of the flesh. It is trying to save ourselves by works, not by the grace of God. Just as Jesus’ love shocked the religious establishment, even today love so jars our religious preconceptions that I have found it necessary to devote an entire webpage to explaining God’s yearning for us to cease despising ourselves and treating ourselves harshly and unlovingly. See the  Being Kind to Yourself  link at the end of this webpage.   ♦  Reaction to Stress or Inner Pain   It is not uncommon for people to end up addicted to sex in a desperate attempt to dull the pain of loneliness or low self-esteem or even to lessen stress. Porn or fantasy is often used in this context but any road to a sexual high could be used.   That they have stumbled upon something with the potential to ease stress is indicated by there being a legitimate therapy known as Exposure Therapy – a treatment in which patients with anxiety disorders are exposed to a feared situation without any danger, in order to overcome their anxiety. In real therapy, however, anxiety is lowered without any negatives, whereas exposing oneself to sexual stimulation outside of the tenderness and security of a particularly loving marriage cheapens and degrades a person and further damages his/her sexuality. There are ways of lessening pain that are free from such negatives.   ♦  Punishing Oneself   Trying to toughen oneself by forcing oneself into sexual experiences is so obviously self-destructive that many who do this recognize it as a form of self-harm – an attempt to punish themselves. This is particularly common in people who feel riddled with guilt.   Obviously, the real solution is to end real or false guilt. No matter who caused the problem, the holy Son of God took all the blame upon himself and bore the full punishment on the cross. This is not some theological mumbo jumbo, the practical implications are profound. For help with this, see the  Self-Harm  link at the end of this page.   ♦   The Longing Simply to Feel   A connection between self-abuse that involves inflecting pain on oneself (self-harm), and sexually abusing oneself (casual sex, masturbation, or whatever) is that often a significant driving force behind both is a desperate longing to  feel . These people would rather feel physical pain or undesirable sex than feel nothing.   What causes them to be so numb that they can only feel such extreme things? They once suffered such physical or emotional pain that, to lessen the torment, they disconnected from their feelings/emotions and now they are (consciously or unconsciously) scared to reconnect. Remaining disconnected is uncomfortable, frustrating, unnatural and it is so unhealthy as to be dangerous.   It is like someone who injures his leg and as a temporary relief for the pain is given a local anaesthetic to numb the entire leg. As the leg begins to heal, the need for the anaesthetic goes. But suppose the person becomes so afraid of the return of any pain that he steals anaesthetic and keeps injecting his leg year after year. He might not feel pain, but a totally numb leg still feels annoyingly uncomfortable and is also unhealthy. (Lepers lose fingers and so on, not because the disease eats their flesh but because leprosy causes a lack of feeling in those parts, causing them to injure and infect themselves without even knowing it. Rats have even been known to gnaw off lepers’ fingers while they sleep.)   So although getting in touch with one’s emotions and inner pain seems scary, it actually ends up being deeply healing and might also significantly reduce the gnawing ache for sexual highs.   ♦   Learned Helplessness   While discussing self-esteem and power, it is appropriate to raise the issue of what is sometimes called Learned Helplessness. Although the connection is particularly obvious in the case of suffering sex abuse, it can also apply to having suffered repeated failures to break an addiction. After a series of unavoidable defeats, the tendency grows formidably strong to give up without even trying to resist, even when changed circumstances makes breaking free easy. A link at the end of this page explores this.   ♦  Masking the Pain   A more obvious factor that can cause people to become addicted to sex is that they use sexual highs to mask the pain, just like some use chemical highs. The problem is that highs fizzle into downers that feel so bad that the downers end up intensifying the need for yet another high to counteract the empty, defeated, feeling of having given in to the addiction – and so the noose of addiction tightens even more.   Such highs are hollow. They pump us up but leave us empty and before long we are deflated again. They are a mirage that never satisfies; promising so much and delivering only disappointment and empty craving. They temporarily distract but never bring healing.   I am not fooled by those who claim to enjoy the horror of being trapped in an endless spin cycle of highs and lows. Years ago, when the dangers of tobacco smoking were less well publicized, psychologists asked smokers to complete a questionnaire about how much they enjoyed smoking, after which it was vividly explained to them how hazardous to health smoking is. Those who kept on smoking were retested. After becoming so aware of the dangers and yet finding themselves still smoking, they claimed to enjoy smoking more than they indicated in their first test. Those who feign enjoyment are just as much the objects of divine pity as the rest of us.   Despite all the false hope they offer, illicit drugs leave a person in a worse state than before. So it is with sexual highs. They are not merely hollow, they hollow out a person, leaving their victims more pathetic and needy than ever.   Genuine love, on the other hand, builds up. It has substance. It heals. Moreover, it not merely makes you feel better, it makes you a better person. We were created not for short-lived sexual thrills but for selfless, unconditional love. Love gives; lust takes. Love empowers; lust enslaves. Love perfects; lust ruins. Love purifies; lust defiles. Love exalts; lust degrades. Love is divine; lust is demonic.   ♦   Addicted to Being Abused   Presumably you have not been sexually abused, or you would be reading my other webpage. However, if you have suffered other forms of abuse, some of the following might be relevant.   Over many years, I kept meeting more and more from dysfunctional families who have made relationship choices ranging from poor and unwise to atrocious and dangerous.   I quickly identified low self-esteem as a significant factor. Desperate to feel ‘loved’ and ‘normal,’ combined with believing they are unworthy of anyone who would treat them with respect, kindness and gentleness, made them willing to settle for abusive relationships.   I recognized also the tendency for people to be drawn to others who have points of similarly and when that similarity is such things as childhood trauma, the result can be undesirable. Yes, such couples might understand each other a little better, but putting together two people with serious issues can multiply relationship difficulties.   I was also aware of the strong tendency of daughters of alcoholics to end up marrying alcoholics, even when they had been adamant never to do such a thing. A big factor is probably false guilt over not having saved their father from drink or reforming him and, with this unresolved, they grasped the vain hope of overcoming their distorted sense of failure by seeking to reform another man. It is just a guess, but perhaps something similar sometimes happens when fathers are abusive. In any case, it is not uncommon for alcoholics to be abusive.   There is another factor in some of these people making disastrous relationship choices, however. I confess that it is so foreign to my own thinking and to most people’s attitude to sex that I have underrated its power.   Paedophiles typically target love-starved and attention-starved children and often they use the word love. They can be cruel and heartless and inflict pain. They might also succeed in inducing orgasm in their victims, which by its very nature is highly pleasurable. Repeated exposure to this perverse combination can cause such confusion that love, sexual pleasure and suffering pain and cruelty become powerfully interconnected in the victim’s mind. Some, for example, find themselves unable to feel ‘loved’ or to feel sexual arousal unless they are verbally abused and/or physically hurt. They find a beautiful, loving relationship unsatisfying and end up addicted to sex perverted by physical and/or emotional abuse.   This might seem incomprehensible to people who have never been repeatedly subjected to a combination of abuse and orgasm, but have you heard of Pavlov’s dogs? Knowing that hungry dogs salivate when given food, Pavlov rang a bell before giving them food. After repeating this a few times, the mere sound of the bell caused them to salivate, even if it were not followed by food.   This phenomenon, known as conditioning, has been confirmed by innumerable scientific experiments, using a vast number of variations. One variation particularly relevant to this discussion involved monitoring men’s sexual arousal while showing them photos of landscapes, randomly interspersed with occasional erotic photos. To this were added photos of shoes, shown just before each erotic photo. Before long, the shoe photos themselves sexually aroused the men, thus proving that sessions of combining sexual arousing with X can result in X itself becoming sexually arousing, even when X had not previously been arousing.   ♦   Demons?   If evil spiritual entities target anyone, it would seem logical to guess that they would enjoy contributing to people becoming enslaved by degrading habits.   We might be tempted to put demons in the same category as little green men from Mars. Even so, how can anyone believe in the existence of any non-physical intelligence –be it God or whatever – and then look at this messed-up world and proclaim there could not possibly be any spiritual beings that are evil?   Despite being less powerful than God and ultimately they are losers, God has spiritual enemies who seek to influence us. And since they are not the good Lord, they play dirty, which includes using deception, fear, threats and addictions to ensnare us.   Every Christian has power over demons and has no reason to fear them but when they attack it is hard to win if we refuse to acknowledge that they are the source of our problems. As I have written:   Humanists imagine they have suddenly become incredibly smart, being able to discern physical and psychological reasons for phenomena. They have actually become incredibly thick, being able to see nothing but the blatantly obvious. The Apostle Paul’s words stick with appalling accuracy: “Professing to be wise, they became fools” (Romans 1:22). Don’t catch their blindness.   The presence of obvious physical reasons for our problems does not reduce the likelihood that they are shots fired from the spirit world. Paul faced enough natural dangers to seize anyone’s attention – wild seas, infected wounds, bandits – yet he focused on spiritual battle.   Though he regularly bled at the hands of human opponents, Paul insisted that our fight is not with people but with spiritual powers (Ephesians 6:12). His gospel threatened the livelihood, pride and traditions of thousands. Wherever he looked, human reasons for his struggle glared at him. Yet he saw the human component of his conflict as inconsequential. Either the apostle was a fruit loop or we clash with the non-physical realm more than most of us suppose.   Although it is by no means the only circumstances in which demons can be involved, some paedophiles deliberately send demons into children as a means of controlling their victims. I know Christians whose sexual addiction had a definite demonic element, and it was not until they became aware of it, and accordingly changed their approach to dealing with it, that they broke free.   ♦   Multiple Personalities?   I have briefly referred to multiple personalities – also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.). Many people – perhaps most – who have it do not even realize it. If you will bear with me for a few sentences you will begin to see why I must raise the matter.   Multiple Personalities is caused by childhood trauma – especially when it is ongoing and the child feels compelled to cope with it without parental support, either because the parents contribute to the trauma or because the victims have been terrorized into keeping it secret. Whenever Dissociative Identity Disorder occurs, it becomes a significant factor in addiction; perhaps not in directly causing it but in making the addiction particularly perplexing and resistant to strenuous efforts to break free.   If you are certain this could not apply to you, feel free to skip this section.   Multiple Personalities can seem scary but what is really scary is not the disorder itself, but the consequences of refusing to admit to oneself that one has it, and thereby perpetuating it, instead of healing.   Although I am about to mention the most unsettling possibilities about Dissociative Identity Disorder, please be comforted by the assurance that not only do they not apply to everyone with D.I.D., they will end when the key parts of a person (sometimes called alters) are discovered, befriended and introduced to Jesus.   Until then, D.I.D. can, for some people, render battling certain temptations almost impossibly difficult. Once these connections with alters occur, however, having Dissociative Identity Disorder suddenly becomes an asset in fighting temptation – an advantage that average people can only dream about.   It is possible for an alter to have a craving or even an addiction that undermines or even ruins a person’s life, and despite the rest of the person being determined not to cave in to the pressure, this alter could be equally determined to do it behind the person’s back. For example, I have had many email exchanges with a devoted Christian, highly committed to her marriage, whose ignorance of one of her alters led her to devastate her husband and herself by committing adultery. Her loving husband and her other parts were fully aware that she had D.I.D. but they decided to “protect” her from this information, feeling confident that it was safe to keep her ignorant. Unknown to all of them, another part, acting totally differently and independently from the rest of them, was having sex with a man who was boarding with her family. The first any of the rest of them knew of it was when she found herself pregnant and the man confessed.   I know of several other devout women, each of whom was having an affair or even more physically dangerous sexual liaisons for years, until eventually discovering the shattering truth. There are all sorts of scenarios in which this can occur.   When alters are befriended, however, Dissociative Identity Disorder not only ceases to be a disadvantage, it becomes a significant spiritual advantage.   In the past, while trying to keep secrets from each other or to dull horrific pain, some alters develop techniques that, when applied to temptation, can lessen its intensity, similar to dulling pain, or some can cause people to more or less forget the temptation. Not everyone has an alter with such a gift, but it is not uncommon for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder to eventually discover one.   In any case, alters are able to team up and support each other. Temptation is deception. The deceiver might sometimes be able to fool some alters but to trick them all at the same time is much less likely. When an alter is nearly overwhelmed by temptation, there will probably be another alter who is less affected and that alter can intervene in any of a number of ways, such as praying, distracting, physically moving the source of the temptation, and so on.     What precipitates this breakthrough is the person, instead of despising his/her parts that have caused him/her so much grief, loving them into the kingdom of God by showing them Christlike love and patience.   ♦ The Love You Need   Even addicts who have now found human love will find parts of the following valuable. All addicts need the assurance that God loves them, as explained in this brief quote from another of my webpages:   One of the most important things is to focus on God’s great love for you and not let deceptive spirits trick you into thinking that God frowns on you when you fall into sin. Yes, God is disappointed, but when a little child with good parents falls, what’s the first thing he does? He runs to mommy or daddy for comfort. You, too, can run to Daddy. God is on your side. He cares deeply for you. Your spiritual enemies, however, want to make you feel uneasy about running to God. They know we instinctively recoil from anyone we fear might be angry or displeased with us and we will keep that person at arms’ length. Your enemies want you to be standoffish from the only One who can truly deliver you and defeat their attempts to bring you down. They don’t want you to rejoice in God’s forgiveness but to feel miserable and isolated from the warmth of God’s comfort.   The tragic reality is that modern society is crowded with people of enormous potential reduced to tormented sex junkies who are literally looking for love in all the wrong places.   During our exploration of many possible factors that can cause or compound sex addiction, we kept finding more and more evidence that as deserts need water, sex addicts need love. Addicts desperately need not the empty promise of self-seeking lust but the real thing; not another meaningless high followed by the inevitable low, but unselfish, unending love and understanding. They have it in Christ, and in everyone who is Christlike. Anyone claiming to be Christlike who does not love these dear people is misguided.   I trained as a psychologist but I left it behind, as a child grows out of toys, because there is more power in Jesus than psychology can ever tap in to.   Jesus’ love for sex addicts is not some curious titbit of historical trivia; it is intensely personal and profoundly significant for every Twenty-First Century person with sexual issues. Nevertheless, to encounter the powerful reality of Jesus’ love, we must start somewhere, and human history is as good a place as any, because history is about real people, and God’s love is a reality that impacts people.   The Gospel records are crammed with proof of God’s love for the sexually immoral.   Despite being exhausted (John 4:6), the Son of God took time out to speak with a Samaritan woman. I’m told that, to First Century Jews, it was considered contemptible for a respectable man either to talk with a Samaritan or to have a private conversation with a woman he was not related to. Jesus was doing both. Not only that, Jesus knew she had such sexual issues that she had had  five  husbands and was currently living with yet another man. We can only guess how many other men she had had even less permanent sexual liaisons with. It seems that even among other women in her own village she was ostracized because she was there alone, drawing water in the middle of the day, not in the hours when women normally visited the well and chatted together. Yet Jesus spoke deeply with this outcast whose pain, rejection and moral defeat kept compounding year after year after year. Not only that, he conversed with her in a manner as significant as his conversation with Nicodemus, the theologian (John 3).   Another time, our holy Savior interrupted a meal to defend – indeed to praise – another woman despised for “her many sins” (Luke 7:40), whose tears had dampened his feet.   Then there’s the time when Jesus stood between an adulterous woman and religious thugs armed with rocks and a lust for blood (John 8:3-11).   Mary Magdalene had a special place in Jesus’ inner circle. Should I speculate as to the source of the seven demons that Jesus delivered her from (Luke 8:1-2)?   I could go on about the Son of God’s compassion for those depraved and enslaved by sin, but need I?   There is more ground to cover but I should not leave these examples without at least touching on the some of the implications of Jesus’ soft heart toward these people. In stark contrast to his tender compassion toward those whom ‘respectable’ people sneered at, Jesus blasted those who did the sneering. For any of us to look down on others, renders us self-righteous hypocrites whose hardness of heart and blindness to our own sin makes our salvation terrifyingly unlikely.   Looking the adulterous woman’s accusers in the eye, Jesus “straightened up and said to them, ‘If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her,’ (John 8:7). Remember that the Ten Commandments outlaws not just murder and adultery but coveting anyone’s wife (Exodus 20:17) and Jesus emphasized that lust is as morally reprehensible as adultery (Matthew 5:28). Whereas to be heartbroken over one’s sin is to fall into God’s mercy, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” (Matthew 7:1) means that to consider oneself less worthy of hell than those we view as morally depraved is to expose oneself to the wrath of God.   When contrasting the remorse-filled tax collector with the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like the morally decadent, Jesus uttered the chilling words that only the tax collector “went home justified before God,”(Luke 18:14). Yes,  justified  is the same Greek term the Bible uses over and over for the act of God necessary for anyone to be saved from hell.   And don’t miss Jesus’ praise of the woman who ‘good’ people considered to be lowlife. Because the woman sobbing at his feet recognized the appalling extent of her sin, Jesus said she loved God more than those who considered their sins to be less grievous (Luke 7:40-47). Let the implications shock you by recalling how critically important Jesus said it is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,” (Mark 12:28-30).   Note also Scripture’s record of the evangelistic success of the woman at the well (John 4:28-30, 39-42). There’s no mention of Nicodemus, the elite spiritual leader, having such an impact after his encounter with Jesus.     ♦ Breaking Free   We all stand in desperate need of God’s mercy. Sex addicts are no more wicked than anyone else. Even if becoming an addict were completely our fault (and it might not be) it would make no difference because Jesus took all the blame upon himself, making us totally blameless. Neither is it our fault that breaking free from an addiction feels impossibly difficult. That’s just the nature of addiction.   Whatever our personal weaknesses, however, we should not let our weaknesses shame us and the glorious Lord who sacrificed his all for us. Instead, we must bring honor to our mighty Savior and to ourselves by fighting temptation with all the power that is ours because of Christ.   It’s now time to raise matters of such importance that I have devoted entire webpages to them. I will limit myself here to brief quotes to introduce you to these issues.   It’s common to ask, “If Almighty God loves me, why doesn’t he take from me my craving for sin?” Here’s the reason: because God is good.   To be good is to be selfless. It is to live not to  feel  good but to  be  good. It is to want what is good so passionately that one is willing to sacrifice every longing, no matter how intense, in order to do what is good. And to be good is to want the best for everyone else, which involves wanting everyone to be good, not because they are forced to be good, or have no cozy alternative to doing what is right, but because they  are  good, which means wanting more than anything else in the universe to do what is right.   Grasp that and you will understand who God is and why he yearns for you to be like him. Stopping a particular sin just because you no longer desire it, does not make you good. You could do that while being as self-serving as the devil himself. Moreover, to do what is right merely because you have no cravings for anything else, not only does not make you Christlike, it exposes you to the terrifyingly dangerous delusion of smugly presuming that God approves, when your heart could actually be the very opposite of God’s.   We are not to “hunger and thirst” for the smug satisfaction of breaking an addiction that is becoming an inconvenience. Rather, we are to “hunger and thirst for  righteousness ,” (Matthew 5:6 – emphasis mine).   God’s Word alludes to being trained in righteousness. As pushing through the pain barrier trains athletes, so battling cravings trains us in righteousness. Training to be a champion is not meant to be easy. Neither is training in righteousness. In Gethsemane, our Role Model’s sweat dripped like blood as he agonized over surrendering to God’s will. “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered,” (Hebrews 5:8). We are told not to find some comfy alternative to what it cost the holy Son of God, but to take up our cross and follow him.   Yes, God can, and sometimes does, eliminate a certain craving someone has, but it achieves little. God could likewise grant a couch potato the title of champion by eliminating all the competition, but the result would be meaningless. Christlikeness without facing the pain of sacrifice is just as ridiculous. You are not called to be a fake hero. You are called to be the real thing.   Satan is a sore loser. Once he finds something that shakes us up he keeps trying it over and over relentlessly until he is absolutely convinced that his tactics will never again work with you. When, finally, he seems to leave, it is only to bide his time for a surprise attack. His persistence is so very unpleasant. The positive side, however, is that this will make you stronger and stronger as you keep resisting his lies.   One of the most important things is to focus on God’s great love for you and not let deceptive spirits trick you into thinking that God frowns on you when you fall into sin. Yes, God is disappointed, but when a little child with good parents falls, what’s the first thing he does? He runs to mommy or daddy for comfort. You, too, can run to Daddy. God is on your side. He cares deeply for you. Your spiritual enemies, however, want to make you feel uneasy about running to God. They know we instinctively recoil from anyone we fear might be angry or displeased with us and we will keep that person at arms’ length. Your enemies want you to be standoffish from the only One who can truly deliver you and defeat their attempts to bring you down. They don’t want you to rejoice in God’s forgiveness but to feel miserable and isolated from the warmth of God’s comfort. Regardless of how you think of yourself, the holy Lord sees you as forgivable because Jesus, the Innocent One, willingly took all the blame upon himself for every unholy thing that has ever occurred in your life, from the most horrific, down to the tiniest moral slips. He swapped places with you so that he could suffer for your guilt and you could be honored with his innocence.   Godly humility flows not from thinking lowly of oneself but from seeing things through God’s eyes. Pride is having the audacity to disagree with God. It is saying I know more than the God of the universe; my puny intellect knows better than the Almighty; the God of truth is wrong and I am right.   Since the God of love sees you as lovable, and true humility involves taking God’s assessment of everything as gospel, humility requires you to see yourself as lovable. If God sees you through eyes of love, how dare you see yourself in a different light, as if your perspective is right and your Creator and Savior is wrong? If God forgives you, to refuse to forgive yourself is to have the audacity to imply that you have higher moral standards than the Judge of all the earth; that you are holier than the Holy Lord. Isn’t that the very pinnacle of pride? Please avoid this deadly trap.   ♦ Bringing this Together   I expect you to find this, the final section, valuable. It will consolidate and reinforce what you have so far learned, and build on matters hinted at. Should you grow impatient, however, you can go straight to the links at the end of this page.   A highly regarded, but not particularly modern, dictionary of English defined masturbation as self-abuse. Sex addiction is a tragic form of sex abuse in which the offender is also the victim. Anyone trapped in it not only deserves compassion but the assurance that there is a way out.   In a sad, desperate effort to find the peace and comfort God wants them to have, hurting people often turn to inappropriate sexual highs, not realizing that by so doing they end up wounding themselves over and over, and sabotaging their healing.   To have sex with someone – or even to fantasize about it, especially if associated with deep arousal – is almost to sell your soul to the person. For sexual highs to be severed from a deeply personal, life-long union, is as damaging as separating an infant from its loving parents. In one form or another, vast numbers of us find ourselves enslaved by some aspect of depersonalized sex that corrodes our dignity and sense of self-worth.   Many of us find ourselves trapped in a guilt cycle, feeling compelled to find some sort of sexual high to comfort ourselves and dull the lonely, icy pain of guilt. But as soon as we come crashing down from the fleeting high, the devastating guilt returns, having been inflamed more than ever by the last high. This vicious circle sends us plummeting downwards in an out-of-control tailspin. As impossible as it seems, however, we can be freed from the death-grip of sex addiction.   By what they have done to themselves, sex addicts often feel they have been cheapened and so are tempted to act cheap. The exciting reality, however, is that no matter what your past, you are of infinite value. This is certain because the majestic Lord of the universe paid what cost him far beyond the combined wealth of a thousand galaxies – the willing death of his irreplaceable Son – just to be your best friend. On the cross, the exquisitely pure Innocent One swapped places with you. He took upon himself your depravity – and suffered the full, terrifying consequences – so that you could be adorned with the perfection of his holiness, and enjoy the eternal honor that accompanies this status.   This staggering truth is taught throughout the Bible. Here’s my favorite summary:   2 Corinthians 5:21  God made him who had no sin [Jesus] to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.   The mind-boggling consequence of this divine exchange is that the instant you surrender to the power of Christ’s forgiveness, you become in God’s all-seeing eyes as pure as crystal, as holy as God himself. The Judge of all humanity – the One before whom every human must one fateful day stand exposed to give full account – pronounces you innocent and would defend your innocence to the death. In fact, defending you to the death is exactly what your crucified Lord has done.   The moment you yield to Christ, you gleam in heaven’s eyes with a purity so dazzling that it is way beyond what any virgin could enjoy who does not have spiritual oneness with the holy Son of God. Having restored you to pristine innocence, the Lord instantly exalts you to the status of divine royalty, making you a treasured child of the glorious King of kings, destined to reign on heaven’s throne for all eternity.   Someone could hand you a check for a hundred million dollars and you pocket it, thinking it is fake and continue to live in poverty. Tragically, many Christians are like that. Christ has given us more than we can get our head around but because it seems far too good to be true, we hardly believe a fraction of it and continue to live in spiritual poverty. For us to be freed, we must believe that we truly are spotless virgins in God’s piercing eyes, and crowned with eternal dignity.   Our self-image is far more critical than most of us realize. We use it to plot our course through life. If our self-image is faulty, we will never reach the heights we were born for because we will be wrongly convinced that we will never get there.   I have found that people who are enslaved to depravity are usually those who cannot forgive themselves. They cannot rise from the mud because they see themselves belonging in the mud. And those who cannot forgive themselves are the very ones who cannot believe that God has forgiven them and cannot forgive those who have hurt them.   The three types of forgiveness – believing in God’s forgiveness, forgiving oneself, and forgiving other people – move together. If just one of the three keeps you down, it will hold back progress with the others. If we treat someone else as unforgivable, it is little wonder that we end up worrying if we ourselves are unforgivable. The way we treat others boomerangs back to us. So do your best to work simultaneously on all three types of forgiveness. Even a little progress on one front will help inch forward the other types of forgiveness. Sex is highly addictive because it is divinely designed to cause a man and woman to be addicted to each other for their entire lives.   Nevertheless, when Jesus is in our life, freedom is always open to us, no matter how impossible it  feels . In fact, it is our spiritual birthright. This does not mean it will be effortless, however. Although God can, and sometimes does, instantly and painlessly remove an addiction, to do so produces spiritual weaklings. A link at the end of this webpage explains powerful reasons why God in his love and wisdom usually opts for us to endure a character-building battle with strong temptation.   We will get nowhere sitting around wishing that breaking an addiction were painless. We must so strongly want to be free that we are willing to endure whatever pain it takes; knowing that the relatively short-lived withdrawal pains are nothing, relative to the pain and consequences of lifelong slavery.   Every addict is tempted to think that another high will lessen the craving but the cold reality is that, despite the initial feeling of relief, each fix ends up inflaming the craving and deepening the addiction. Whether it be an addiction to self-harm or to abuse God’s gift of sex, the suffering it brings is like a drunk enduring hangovers and humiliation, losing his job, his house, his family and his dignity, in order to enjoy the “happiness” that alcohol brings.   A final complicating factor is that whether you think of it as your subconscious, your inner child, suppressed memories, or something else, there could be a buried part of you that, in ways you are hardly aware of, is feeding a sexual addiction or hindering your efforts to break free. If these parts of you receive understanding, comfort and healing, you will be more empowered to fight the addiction because every part of you will be working toward the same goal.     ♦ Conclusion   It is highly understandable that hurting people end up in a destructive downward spiral of self-inflicted sexual abuse. Having briefly examined many factors contributing to this, you now have a raft of ways of reducing the pressure to self-destruct and regain the dignity and fulfilment you deserve. Each factor is treated in greater depth in the links below.   To burst free, you might not necessarily have to address every issue mentioned but my goal in exposing these often hidden factors is to spare you the frustration and bewilderment of having to fight invisible enemies. Or think of it as if you were uprooting a bush. If you are strong enough, you might be able tear it out of the ground immediately. If it refuses to budge, however, you will have more success if you first loosen at least some of the roots.

When Sexual Abuse Causes an Unhealthy Craving for Sex Tragically, being sexually abused impacts one so profoundly that sex abuse often ends up being perpetuated by abusing oneself sexually. It will vary from person to person whether the resulting sexual self-abuse is solitary or involves a partner, whether the person considers the habit desirable, and whether he or she is conscious of a link to having been sexually interfered with. Like other highs, sexual highs can be very addictive. In fact, sex is divinely designed to be so potentially addictive that it binds a couple to each other for life. So having been sexually abused is not the only route to a sex addiction. Nevertheless, it is a significant one. The tendency of one’s mind to suppress or dismiss distressing memories, plus the often underrated complication that sexual interference is not always unpleasant, make it possible to have been sexually abused in the past and either not recall it or not recognize it as abuse. If you feel certain that you have never been sexually interfered with, however, you might prefer to read  Sex Addiction , a much shorter version of this webpage that omits sections of immense importance to sex abuse survivors by exploring the many ways that sex abuse and sex addiction can interact and compound the addiction. Both sex abuse and a victim’s reaction to it are more complex than is commonly understood. Through this webpage, however, you will discover that gaining this understanding is easy and it paves the way to breaking sex addiction. Sex junkies – people trapped in the shame, defeat and depravity of sex addiction – not only have my deep compassion and respect but deserve everyone’s love. It is my hope that before completing this webpage you will not only have answers but will realize that the most depraved are not prostitutes, homosexuals, rapists, child molesters or those who sexually defile themselves with animals, but those who feel morally superior to them. Consider the radical moralist to whom millions swear allegiance (and immediately ignore because his laser clarity cuts all of us down to size). “I tell you the truth, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are entering the kingdom of God ahead of you,” Jesus told the holier-than-thous (Matthew 21:31). Or, as Proverbs 30:12 puts it, there are “those who are pure in their own eyes and yet are not cleansed of their filth.” It is as enticing as chocolate-coated poison to a starving man to seek to justify ourselves by thinking ourselves better than some. When dispensing the mercy that all of us so desperately need, however, God chooses those who position themselves on the bottom of humanity’s pile, whereas those who consider themselves better are left to rot in the stench of their own self-righteousness. God forgives according to how enormously we think we need forgiveness. Sadly, even those addicted to depravity can ruin their spiritual advantage by sneering at those hooked on other forms of depravity. ♦ Unexpected Consequences of Sex Abuse Drug pushers want to create addicts. That’s readily understood. Few of us stop to think, however, that it is likewise in the interest of sex predators to create addicts. Turning victims into sex addicts not only makes the victims more compliant, it can make them feel they are as guilty as the instigator, which renders them less likely to report the crime to authorities. Consequently, often without their victims’ awareness of their schemes, many predators consciously employ insidious methods to create addicts. No explanation is needed as to why sex abuse can result in a long-term loathing of sex. Why sex abuse can produce an insatiable craving for sex might be less obvious but with a little thought it makes perfect sense. The first point to note is that although sex abuse can be terrifying and painful, it is quite possible to be sexually abused without unpleasant feelings. In fact, feeling pleasure when abused is far more likely than is commonly realized. Whether sexual abuse produces pain or pleasure typically has nothing to do with the victim’s morality but everything to do with the abuser’s technique. Even with the same offender and victim, it is possible for certain instances to be pleasurable and some traumatic. In fact, an occasion can start off either way and end up producing the opposite feelings. For someone to have opposite reactions to a vaguely similar event can be so perplexing that some people experiencing it can only cope by separating the two reactions in their mind, so that one part of the person can recall just one reaction and another part of the person can only recall the opposite reaction. This can lead to what is commonly known as multiple personalities. Or some people might simply find feeling pleasure during abuse so horrifying that they suppress all memory of it and recall only the distressing parts. We shall see, however, that even when sex abuse produces nothing but pain and trauma, it can still cause sex addiction. Let’s explore a number of reasons for this. ♦  An Attempt to Toughen Oneself It is not uncommon for sex abuse survivors to end up deliberately exposing themselves to more sex in a desperate attempt to dull the pain – to harden themselves to the flashbacks etc that they suffer. It is common to use porn or fantasy in this context but any road to a sexual high could be used. Since it is an attempt to make themselves more callous, some even find themselves addicted to fantasizing about particularly repulsive sex acts. That they have stumbled upon something with the potential to ease the stress is indicated by there being a legitimate therapy known as Exposure Therapy – a treatment in which patients with anxiety disorders are exposed to a feared situation without any danger, in order to overcome their anxiety. In real therapy, however, anxiety is lowered without any negatives, whereas exposing oneself to sexual stimulation outside of the tenderness and security of a particularly loving marriage cheapens and degrades a person and further damages his/her sexuality. There are ways of lessening pain that are free from such negatives. ♦  Punishing Oneself Trying to toughen oneself by forcing oneself into sexual experiences is so obviously self-destructive that many who do this recognize it as a form of self-harm – an attempt to punish themselves. This is particularly common if a victim is riddled with guilt (typically false guilt) over having suffered abuse. Obviously, the real solution is to end real or false guilt. No matter who is to blame for the abuse, the holy Son of God took all the blame upon himself and bore the full punishment on the cross. This is not some theological mumbo jumbo, the practical implications are profound. For help with this, see the  Self-Harm  link at the end of this page. ♦  The Longing Simply to Feel A connection between self-abuse that involves inflicting pain on oneself (self-harm), and sexually abusing oneself (casual sex, masturbation, or whatever) is that often a significant driving force behind both is a desperate longing to  feel . These people would rather feel physical pain or undesirable sex than feel nothing. What causes them to be so numb that they can only feel such extreme things? They once suffered such physical or emotional pain (often as a result of abuse) that, to lessen the torment, they disconnected from their feelings/emotions and now they are (consciously or unconsciously) scared to reconnect. Remaining disconnected is uncomfortable, frustrating, unnatural and it is so unhealthy as to be dangerous. It is like someone who injures his leg and as a temporary relief for the pain is given a local anaesthetic to numb the entire leg. As the leg begins to heal, the need for the anaesthetic goes. But suppose the person becomes so afraid of the return of any pain that he steals anaesthetic and keeps injecting his leg year after year. He might not feel pain, but a totally numb leg still feels annoyingly uncomfortable and is also unhealthy. (Lepers lose fingers and so on, not because the disease eats their flesh but because leprosy causes a lack of feeling in those parts, causing them to injure and infect themselves without even knowing it. Rats have even been known to gnaw off lepers’ fingers while they sleep.) So although getting in touch with one’s emotions and inner pain seems scary, it actually ends up being deeply healing and might also significantly reduce the gnawing ache for sexual highs. ♦  Self-Loathing Most of us have a tendency to be annoyed with ourselves. And this can aggravate addictions. Even without multiple personalities, every one of us has something approaching this condition. The apostle Paul, for example, devoted nearly an entire chapter to the frustration of part of him desperately wanting to do what is right and another part of him wanting the opposite, thus creating an internal war (Romans 7). Most of us think it must be godly to despise or even hate any part of us that craves sexual sin. The dilemma is that it must surely be counterproductive to further starve of love a part of us whose undesirable cravings have been driven or inflamed precisely by being starved of unconditional love. But is it Christlike to hate anyone? Wasn’t Jesus repeatedly slammed by religious people for the way he loved sinners? Of course, our holy Savior never encouraged sin, but he continually poured out love on those depraved and enslaved by sin; befriending them, healing them and defending them from those who sneered at them. As Romans five points out, Christ died not for the righteous – by God’s perfect standards, there are none – but for the ungodly, and, as 1 John declares, the reason we now love is that God loved us first – when all of us had reason to be disgusted with ourselves. Jesus emphasized the importance of us loving our enemies because that’s the very nature of God (Matthew 5:44-45). So if the part of us that craves sexual sin is our most dangerous enemy, then that is the very part on which we must particularly practice godliness. This is not, of course, to encourage sin but to saturate that part of us with unconditional love in the hope of nurturing repentance. In the words of Romans 2:4, “God’s kindness leads you toward repentance.” Remember Zacchaeus, the money grubbing turncoat who extracted money from his fellow countrymen to finance the foreign army occupying the holy land. Above all the town’s dignitaries and spiritual leaders, the Messiah singled out that shunned, tree-climbing weasel for companionship. Everyone was disgusted by Jesus’ choice, but before the indignant protests had stopped echoing throughout the town, one cold heart had thawed and the person everyone had given up on was extravagantly repenting. He who had been despised and ostracized finally found someone who believed in him and showed him kindness. The result was astonishing (Luke 19:1-10). No one needs such love, and will be transformed by it, more than sinners. We might think it godlike to beat ourselves up, but it is actually the way of the flesh. It is trying to save ourselves by works, not by the grace of God. Just as Jesus’ love shocked the religious establishment, even today love so jars our religious preconceptions that I have found it necessary to devote an entire webpage to explaining God’s yearning for us to cease despising ourselves and treating ourselves harshly and unlovingly. See the  Being Kind to Yourself  link at the end of this webpage. ♦  Abysmally Low Self-Esteem It breaks my heart that low self-esteem can reach the extreme of not only making victims feel they are no value other than as a sex object but even feeling that acting as a sex object is their only reason for existing. A sex addict told me, “I have discovered that whenever I crave sex I am feeling three things: worthless, scared and hopeless.” Among the things that make love so critically important is that selfless love and self-esteem travel together. Whenever we are robbed of love, self-esteem is mugged. To understand, let’s consider verbal abuse. Verbal putdowns might seem mild compared with sex abuse but if they can result in life-long devastation, it highlights how long the damaging effects of past sex abuse can linger. The greatest tragedy of being subjected to verbal abuse as a child is that even when victims eventually grow up and leave the people who used to put them down, they typically continue through life verbally abusing themselves and putting themselves down and perpetuating their crushed self-esteem. Abusing themselves becomes an addiction that they desperately need to break and yet this is frustratingly hard to do. Abuse has become a way of life for them and they have come to believe the lie that they deserve it. So it is with sex abuse. After the abuser leaves, victims need to break the cycle or they will keep abusing and degrading themselves, through subjecting themselves to porn or masturbation or illicit sex. Self-loathing follows selfishness, like pain follows a beating. This holds true regardless of whether we are the victims or the perpetrators of selfishness. What keeps many from soaring above the moral squalor in which they wallow is that they mistakenly think they have nothing to lose. They fall for the lie – often deliberately reinforced by their abuser – that they are already in humanity’s gutter, the lowest of the low, shattered beyond repair, defiled, despised and destroyed. Imagining that no one believes in them and that they are trash, they conclude that it is therefore appropriate to treat themselves as trash and even pretend to like it. But someone does believe in them, and it isn’t just someone, but the King of glory, the Lord of heaven, the God of the impossible. The holy, love-struck one who sees astonishing potential in them is the ultimate rescuer and restorer, whose tender kiss transforms slimy toads trapped in a sewer; turning them into regal beings admired by all of heaven. This is no fairy tale; it is as real as the blood, sweat and tears of the eternal Son of God whose tortured frame writhed on the cross for you. The implications are stupendous and life changing. The Holy One traded places with you, suffering the ultimate humiliation so that you could enjoy the ultimate exultation. Then, on your behalf, he burst through the grave so that his glorious destiny could be your destiny. No matter how defiled, rejected and hopeless you feel, you have a secret lover, completely different from anyone you have ever known. There is someone who believes in you; someone who yearns to give and not take. He not only spends his life on you and gives all that he has, he has no needs of his own. He will never defile or exploit you. He is perfect for you. He is heavenly. He is divine. No matter what anyone else thinks or has told you, the exalted Lord of the universe, the Judge of all humanity, counts you worthy. It is agonizingly hard for many of us to realize that we can be treasured and loved for who we are, not merely for what we do. As unbelievable as it might seem, however, this is precisely how God sees you and he is always right. One sex addict, who even went to the extreme of unsuccessfully trying to seduce me, her counsellor, said that succeeding in seduction gives her a feeling of power. In other words, it gives her the temporary high of boosting low self-esteem. To be a sex abuse victim – to be forced to have sex against one’s will – is to be rendered powerless. To seduce or force someone else to have sex might seem like turning the tables but it is actually giving abusers the ultimate compliment of elevating them into role models – an honor they by no means deserve. It is actually turning victims into predators. In contrast, God’s way is to turn victims into victors. ♦   Learned Helplessness While discussing self-esteem and powerlessness, it is appropriate to raise the issue of what is sometimes called Learned Helplessness. By overpowering their victims, abusers subject them to situations where, no matter how determined victims are to avoid sex, resistance is useless. Repeated exposure to such situations, not only crushes self-esteem, but produces a psychological blockage to resisting sexual pressure. Put simply: after a series of unavoidable defeats, the tendency grows formidably strong to give up without even trying to resist, even when changed circumstances makes breaking free easy. A link at the end of this page explores this. ♦  Masking the Pain Another factor that can cause abuse survivors to become addicted to sex is that they use sexual highs to mask the pain, just like some use chemical highs. The problem is that highs fizzle into downers that feel so bad that the downers end up intensifying the need for yet another high to counteract the empty, defeated, feeling of having given in to the addiction – and so the noose of addiction tightens even more. Such highs are hollow. They pump us up but leave us empty and before long we are deflated again. They are a mirage that never satisfies; promising so much and delivering only disappointment and empty craving. They temporarily distract but never bring healing. I am not fooled by those who claim to enjoy the horror of being trapped in an endless spin cycle of highs and lows. Years ago, when the dangers of tobacco smoking were less well publicized, psychologists asked smokers to complete a questionnaire about how much they enjoyed smoking, after which it was vividly explained to them how hazardous to health smoking is. Those who kept on smoking were retested. After becoming so aware of the dangers and yet finding themselves still smoking, they claimed to enjoy smoking more than they indicated in their first test. Those who feign enjoyment are just as much the objects of divine pity as the rest of us. Despite all the false hope they offer, illicit drugs leave a person in a worse state than before. So it is with sexual highs. They are not merely hollow, they hollow out a person, leaving their victims more pathetic and needy than ever. Genuine love, on the other hand, builds up. It has substance. It heals. Moreover, it not merely makes you feel better, it makes you a better person. We were created not for short-lived sexual thrills but for selfless, unconditional love. Love gives; lust takes. Love empowers; lust enslaves. Love perfects; lust ruins. Love purifies; lust defiles. Love exalts; lust degrades. Love is divine; lust is demonic. We are discussing different factors in sex addiction but this basic human need for unconditional love and acceptance is one that we will keep finding ourselves having to return to. I beg you not to despair, however. No matter how spurned and repulsive you might feel, the love you so urgently need is surprisingly available and we will explore this before long. To anyone enslaved by sexual highs and lows, the merest mention of genuine love can be like tormenting a starving man with the smell of food he is prevented from tasting. The stubborn fact remains, however: as fish were made for water, we were made for an ocean of unconditional, God-sized love. And to be deprived of it drives us nearly insane. Two psychologists, Dr. R. Earle and Dr G. Crow, wrote a book about sex addiction. Poignantly, they titled the book,  Lonely all the time  . In it, they wrote, “Believe it or not, the driving force behind most sex addicts’ compulsion is a desperate need for love.” Every child has a compelling need for non-sexual hugs and parental love and approval. An ancient proverb has disturbing implications for any child starved of such love: “. . .  to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet.” (Proverbs 27:7). People deprived of genuine love during their critical developmental years are not only highly vulnerable and a prime target for predators when they are children but, unless they find healing, they are likely to carry throughout their adult years that gnawing ache inside that makes them vulnerable. ♦   Addicted to Being Abused Over many years, I kept meeting more and more sex abuse survivors who have made relationship choices ranging from poor and unwise to atrocious and dangerous. I quickly identified low self-esteem as a significant factor. Desperate to feel ‘loved’ and ‘normal,’ combined with believing they are unworthy of anyone who would treat them with respect, kindness and gentleness, made them willing to settle for abusive relationships. I recognized also the tendency for people to be drawn to others who have points of similarly and when that similarity is such things as childhood trauma, the result can be undesirable. Yes, such couples might understand each other a little better, but putting together two people with serious issues can multiply relationship difficulties. I was also aware of the strong tendency of daughters of alcoholics to end up marrying alcoholics, even when they had been adamant never to do such a thing. A big factor is probably false guilt over not having saved their father from drink or reforming him and, with this unresolved, they grasped the vain hope of overcoming their distorted sense of failure by seeking to reform another man. It is just a guess, but perhaps something similar sometimes happens when fathers are abusive. In any case, it is not uncommon for alcoholics to be abusive. There is another factor in abuse survivors making disastrous relationship choices, however. I confess that it is so foreign to my own thinking and to most people’s attitude to sex that I have underrated its power. Paedophiles typically target love-starved and attention-starved children and often they use the word love. They can be cruel and heartless and inflict pain. They might also succeed in inducing orgasm in their victims, which by its very nature is highly pleasurable. Repeated exposure to this perverse combination can cause such confusion that love, sexual pleasure and suffering pain and cruelty become powerfully interconnected in the victim’s mind. Some, for example, find themselves unable to feel ‘loved’ or to feel sexual arousal unless they are verbally abused and/or physically hurt. They find a beautiful, loving relationship unsatisfying and end up addicted to sex perverted by physical and/or emotional abuse. This might seem incomprehensible to people who have never been repeatedly subjected to a combination of abuse and orgasm, but have you heard of Pavlov’s dogs? Knowing that hungry dogs salivate when given food, Pavlov rang a bell before giving them food. After repeating this a few times, the mere sound of the bell caused them to salivate, even if it were not followed by food. This phenomenon, known as conditioning, has been confirmed by innumerable scientific experiments, using a vast number of variations. One variation particularly relevant to this discussion involved monitoring men’s sexual arousal while showing them photos of landscapes, randomly interspersed with occasional erotic photos. To this were added photos of shoes, shown just before each erotic photo. Before long, the shoe photos themselves sexually aroused the men, thus proving that sessions of combining sexual arousing with X can result in X itself becoming sexually arousing, even when X had not previously been arousing. ♦  Multiple Personalitie s? I have briefly referred to multiple personalities – also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.). Many people – perhaps most – who have it do not even realize it. If you will bear with me for a few sentences you will begin to see why I must raise the matter. Multiple Personalities is caused by childhood trauma – especially when it is ongoing and the child feels compelled to cope with it without parental support, either because the parents contribute to the trauma or because the victims have been terrorized into keeping it secret. What makes this so relevant to our discussion is that being sexually abused is the most common source of this trauma. Moreover, whenever Dissociative Identity Disorder occurs, it becomes a significant factor in addiction; perhaps not in directly causing it but in making the addiction particularly perplexing and resistant to strenuous efforts to break free. Multiple Personalities can seem scary but what is really scary is not the disorder itself, but the consequences of refusing to admit to oneself that one has it, and thereby perpetuating it, instead of healing. Although I am about to mention the most unsettling possibilities about Dissociative Identity Disorder, please be comforted by the assurance that not only do they not apply to everyone with D.I.D., they will end when the key parts of a person (sometimes called alters) are discovered, befriended and introduced to Jesus. Until then, D.I.D. can, for some people, render battling certain temptations almost impossibly difficult. Once these connections with alters occur, however, having Dissociative Identity Disorder suddenly becomes an asset in fighting temptation – an advantage that average people can only dream about. It is possible for an alter to have a craving or even an addiction that undermines or even ruins a person’s life, and despite the rest of the person being determined not to cave in to the pressure, this alter could be equally determined to do it behind the person’s back. For example, I have had many email exchanges with a devoted Christian, highly committed to her marriage, whose ignorance of one of her alters led her to devastate her husband and herself by committing adultery. Her loving husband and her other parts were fully aware that she had D.I.D. but they decided to “protect” her from this information, feeling confident that it was safe to keep her ignorant. Unknown to all of them, another part, acting totally differently and independently from the rest of them, was having sex with a man who was boarding with her family. The first any of the rest of them knew of it was when she found herself pregnant and the man confessed. I know of several other devout women, each of whom was having an affair or even more physically dangerous sexual liaisons for years, until eventually discovering the shattering truth. There are all sorts of scenarios in which this can occur. Just one example is someone having a superficial similarity to a former abuser, causing an alter to be accidentally triggered into believing she is a helpless little girl trapped in an abuse situation where she has no choice but to offer sexual favors. It is very possible for the alters who are usually active in the marriage to detest sex but for an unknown alter to crave sex, resulting in a double whammy for the long-suffering husband when the horrifying secret eventually unravels. I know a woman who feels exceptionally protective toward children and surrounds herself with them. She has alters who not only suffered child abuse but hate it so intensely that they are adamant they would kill themselves rather than sexually interfere with a child. Nevertheless, for years this dear woman had no idea that she had certain alters who lusted after little children. In contrast to her other alters, these alters had been trained by her abusers not only to be convinced that molesting little children is the right thing to do but that by doing this they were actually helping the children. Persuading these confused alters that molesting children is illegal and wrong proved frustratingly difficult. When alters are befriended, however, Dissociative Identity Disorder not only ceases to be a disadvantage, it becomes a significant spiritual advantage. In the past, while trying to keep secrets from each other or to dull horrific pain, some alters develop techniques that, when applied to temptation, can lessen its intensity, similar to dulling pain, or some can cause people to more or less forget the temptation. Not everyone has an alter with such a gift, but it is not uncommon for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder to eventually discover one. In any case, alters are able to team up and support each other. Temptation is deception. The deceiver might sometimes be able to fool some alters but to trick them all at the same time is much less likely. When an alter is nearly overwhelmed by temptation, there will probably be another alter who is less affected and that alter can intervene in any of a number of ways, such as praying, distracting, physically moving the source of the temptation, and so on. What precipitates this breakthrough is the person, instead of despising his/her parts that have caused him/her so much grief, loving them into the kingdom of God by showing them Christlike love and patience. ♦  Demons ? If evil spiritual entities target anyone, it would seem logical to expect sexual predators to be prime candidates. We might also guess that such beings would enjoy contributing to abuse victims becoming enslaved by degrading habits. We might be tempted to put demons in the same category as little green men from Mars. Even so, how can anyone believe in the existence of any non-physical intelligence –be it God or whatever – and then look at this messed-up world and proclaim there could not possibly be any spiritual beings that are evil? Despite being less powerful than God and ultimately they are losers, God has spiritual enemies who seek to influence us. And since they are not the good Lord, they play dirty, which includes using deception, fear, threats and addictions to ensnare us. Every Christian has power over demons and has no reason to fear them but when they attack it is hard to win if we refuse to acknowledge that they are the source of our problems. As I have written: Humanists imagine they have suddenly become incredibly smart, being able to discern physical and psychological reasons for phenomena. They have actually become incredibly thick, being able to see nothing but the blatantly obvious. The Apostle Paul’s words stick with appalling accuracy: “Professing to be wise, they became fools” ( Romans 1:22 ). Don’t catch their blindness. The presence of obvious physical reasons for our problems does not reduce the likelihood that they are shots fired from the spirit world. Paul faced enough natural dangers to seize anyone’s attention – wild seas, infected wounds, bandits – yet he focused on spiritual battle. Though he regularly bled at the hands of human opponents, Paul insisted that our fight is not with people but with spiritual powers (Ephesians 6:12). His gospel threatened the livelihood, pride and traditions of thousands. Wherever he looked, human reasons for his struggle glared at him. Yet he saw the human component of his conflict as inconsequential. Either the apostle was a fruit loop or we clash with the non-physical realm more than most of us suppose. Although it is by no means the only circumstances in which demons can be involved, some paedophiles deliberately send demons into children as a means of controlling their victims. I know Christians whose sexual addiction had a definite demonic element, and it was not until they became aware of it, and accordingly changed their approach to dealing with it, that they broke free. Finding Love The tragic reality is that modern society is crowded with people of enormous potential reduced to tormented sex junkies who are literally looking for love in all the wrong places. During our exploration of many possible ways that having suffered sexual abuse can cause or compound sex addiction, we kept finding more and more evidence that as deserts need water, sex addicts need love. Addicts desperately need not the empty promise of self-seeking lust but the real thing; not another meaningless high followed by the inevitable low, but unselfish, unending love and understanding. They have it in Christ, and in everyone who is Christlike. Anyone claiming to be Christlike who does not love these dear people is misguided. I trained as a psychologist but I left it behind, as a child grows out of toys, because there is more power in Jesus than psychology can ever tap in to. Jesus’ love for sex addicts is not some curious titbit of historical trivia; it is intensely personal and profoundly significant for every Twenty-First Century person with sexual issues. Nevertheless, to encounter the powerful reality of Jesus’ love, we must start somewhere, and human history is as good a place as any, because history is about real people, and God’s love is a reality that impacts people. The Gospel records are crammed with proof of God’s love for the sexually immoral. Despite being exhausted (John 4:6), the Son of God took time out to speak with a Samaritan woman. I’m told that, to First Century Jews, it was considered contemptible for a respectable man either to talk with a Samaritan or to have a private conversation with a woman he was not related to. Jesus was doing both. Not only that, Jesus knew she had such sexual issues that she had had  five  husbands and was currently living with yet another man. We can only guess how many other men she had had even less permanent sexual liaisons with. It seems that even among other women in her own village she was ostracized because she was there alone, drawing water in the middle of the day, not in the hours when women normally visited the well and chatted together. Yet Jesus spoke deeply with this outcast whose pain, rejection and moral defeat kept compounding year after year after year. Not only that, he conversed with her in a manner as significant as his conversation with Nicodemus, the theologian (John 3). Another time, our holy Savior interrupted a meal to defend – indeed to praise – another woman despised for “her many sins” (Luke 7:40), whose tears had dampened his feet. Then there’s the time when Jesus stood between an adulterous woman and religious thugs armed with rocks and a lust for blood (John 8:3-11). Mary Magdalene had a special place in Jesus’ inner circle. Should I speculate as to the source of the seven demons that Jesus delivered her from (Luke 8:1-2)? I could go on about the Son of God’s compassion for those depraved and enslaved by sin, but need I? There is more ground to cover but I should not leave these examples without at least touching on the some of the implications of Jesus’ soft heart toward these people. In stark contrast to his tender compassion toward those whom ‘respectable’ people sneered at, Jesus blasted those who did the sneering. For any of us to look down on others, renders us self-righteous hypocrites whose hardness of heart and blindness to our own sin makes our salvation terrifyingly unlikely. Looking the adulterous woman’s accusers in the eye, Jesus “straightened up and said to them, ‘If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her,’ (John 8:7). Remember that the Ten Commandments outlaws not just murder and adultery but coveting anyone’s wife (Exodus 20:17) and Jesus emphasized that lust is as morally reprehensible as adultery (Matthew 5:28). Whereas to be heartbroken over one’s sin is to fall into God’s mercy, “Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” (Matthew 7:1) means that to consider oneself less worthy of hell than those we view as morally depraved is to expose oneself to the wrath of God. When contrasting the remorse-filled tax collector with the Pharisee who thanked God that he was not like the morally decadent, Jesus uttered the chilling words that only the tax collector “went home justified before God,”(Luke 18:14). Yes,  justified  is the same Greek term the Bible uses over and over for the act of God necessary for anyone to be saved from hell. And don’t miss Jesus’ praise of the woman who ‘good’ people considered to be lowlife. Because the woman sobbing at his feet recognized the appalling extent of her sin, Jesus said she loved God more than those who considered their sins to be less grievous (Luke 7:40-47). Let the implications shock you by recalling how critically important Jesus said it is to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,” (Mark 12:28-30). Note also Scripture’s record of the evangelistic success of the woman at the well (John 4:28-30, 39-42). There’s no mention of Nicodemus, the elite spiritual leader, having such an impact after his encounter with Jesus. ♦ Breaking Free We all stand in desperate need of God’s mercy. Sex addicts are no more wicked than anyone else. In fact, most abuse survivors become addicts through no fault of their own, like someone hooked on drugs since childhood, because a drug pusher tricked him into thinking hard drugs were candy. Even if becoming an addict were completely our fault, however, it would make no difference because Jesus took all the blame upon himself, making us totally blameless. Neither is it our fault that breaking free from an addiction feels impossibly difficult. That’s just the nature of addiction. Whatever our personal weaknesses, however, we should not let our weaknesses shame us and the glorious Lord who sacrificed his all for us. Instead, we must bring honor to our mighty Savior and to ourselves by fighting temptation with all the power that is ours because of Christ. It’s now time to raise matters of such importance that I have devoted entire webpages to them. I will limit myself here to brief quotes to introduce you to these issues. It’s common to ask, “If Almighty God loves me, why doesn’t he take from me my craving for sin?” Here’s the reason: because God is good. To be good is to be selfless. It is to live not to  feel  good but to  be  good. It is to want what is good so passionately that one is willing to sacrifice every longing, no matter how intense, in order to do what is good. And to be good is to want the best for everyone else, which involves wanting everyone to be good, not because they are forced to be good, or have no cozy alternative to doing what is right, but because they  are  good, which means wanting more than anything else in the universe to do what is right. Grasp that and you will understand who God is and why he yearns for you to be like him. Stopping a particular sin just because you no longer desire it, does not make you good. You could do that while being as self-serving as the devil himself. Moreover, to do what is right merely because you have no cravings for anything else, not only does not make you Christlike, it exposes you to the terrifyingly dangerous delusion of smugly presuming that God approves, when your heart could actually be the very opposite of God’s. We are not to “hunger and thirst” for the smug satisfaction of breaking an addiction that is becoming an inconvenience. Rather, we are to “hunger and thirst for  righteousness ,” (Matthew 5:6 – emphasis mine). God’s Word alludes to being trained in righteousness. As pushing through the pain barrier trains athletes, so battling cravings trains us in righteousness. Training to be a champion is not meant to be easy. Neither is training in righteousness. In Gethsemane, our Role Model’s sweat dripped like blood as he agonized over surrendering to God’s will. “Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered,” (Hebrews 5:8). We are told not to find some comfy alternative to what it cost the holy Son of God, but to take up our cross and follow him. Yes, God can, and sometimes does, eliminate a certain craving someone has, but it achieves little. God could likewise grant a couch potato the title of champion by eliminating all the competition, but the result would be meaningless. Christlikeness without facing the pain of sacrifice is just as ridiculous. You are not called to be a fake hero. You are called to be the real thing. Satan is a sore loser. Once he finds something that shakes us up he keeps trying it over and over relentlessly until he is absolutely convinced that his tactics will never again work with you. When, finally, he seems to leave, it is only to bide his time for a surprise attack. His persistence is so very unpleasant. The positive side, however, is that this will make you stronger and stronger as you keep resisting his lies. One of the most important things is to focus on God’s great love for you and not let deceptive spirits trick you into thinking that God frowns on you when you fall into sin. Yes, God is disappointed, but when a little child with good parents falls, what’s the first thing he does? He runs to mommy or daddy for comfort. You, too, can run to Daddy. God is on your side. He cares deeply for you. Your spiritual enemies, however, want to make you feel uneasy about running to God. They know we instinctively recoil from anyone we fear might be angry or displeased with us and we will keep that person at arms’ length. Your enemies want you to be standoffish from the only One who can truly deliver you and defeat their attempts to bring you down. They don’t want you to rejoice in God’s forgiveness but to feel miserable and isolated from the warmth of God’s comfort. Regardless of how you think of yourself, the holy Lord sees you as forgivable because Jesus, the Innocent One, willingly took all the blame upon himself for every unholy thing that has ever occurred in your life, from the most horrific, down to the tiniest moral slips. He swapped places with you so that he could suffer for your guilt and you could be honored with his innocence. Godly humility flows not from thinking lowly of oneself but from seeing things through God’s eyes. Pride is having the audacity to disagree with God. It is saying I know more than the God of the universe; my puny intellect knows better than the Almighty; the God of truth is wrong and I am right. Since the God of love sees you as lovable, and true humility involves taking God’s assessment of everything as gospel, humility requires you to see yourself as lovable. If God sees you through eyes of love, how dare you see yourself in a different light, as if your perspective is right and your Creator and Savior is wrong? If God forgives you, to refuse to forgive yourself is to have the audacity to imply that you have higher moral standards than the Judge of all the earth; that you are holier than the Holy Lord. Isn’t that the very pinnacle of pride? Please avoid this deadly trap. Bringing this Together I expect you to find this, the final section, valuable. It will consolidate and reinforce what you have so far learned, and build on matters hinted at. Should you grow impatient, however, you can go straight to the links at the end of this page. A highly regarded, but not particularly modern, dictionary of English defined masturbation as self-abuse. Sex addiction is a tragic form of sex abuse in which the offender is also the victim. Anyone trapped in it not only deserves compassion but the assurance that there is a way out. The heart-breaking reality is that for years – even decades after their abusers have stopped hurting them – survivors of child abuse frequently perpetuate the abuse they received as children. In a sad, desperate effort to find the peace and comfort they deserve, hurting people – especially abuse survivors – often turn to inappropriate sexual highs, not realizing that by so doing they end up wounding themselves over and over, and sabotaging their healing. To have sex with someone – or even to fantasize about it, especially if associated with deep arousal – is almost to sell your soul to the person. For sexual highs to be severed from a deeply personal, life-long union, is as damaging as separating an infant from its loving parents. In one form or another, vast numbers of us find ourselves enslaved by some aspect of depersonalized sex that corrodes our dignity and sense of self-worth. Many of us find ourselves trapped in a guilt cycle, feeling compelled to find some sort of sexual high to comfort ourselves and dull the lonely, icy pain of guilt. But as soon as we come crashing down from the fleeting high, the devastating guilt returns, having been inflamed more than ever by the last high. This vicious circle sends us plummeting downwards in an out-of-control tailspin. As impossible as it seems, however, we can be freed from the death-grip of sex addiction. Sex addicts and/or sex abuse survivors feel they have been cheapened and so are tempted to act cheap. The exciting reality, however, is that no matter what your past, you are of infinite value. This is certain because the majestic Lord of the universe paid what cost him far beyond the combined wealth of a thousand galaxies – the willing death of his irreplaceable Son – just to be your best friend. On the cross, the exquisitely pure Innocent One swapped places with you. He took upon himself your depravity – and suffered the full, terrifying consequences – so that you could be adorned with the perfection of his holiness, and enjoy the eternal honor that accompanies this status. This staggering truth is taught throughout the Bible. Here’s my favorite summary: 2 Corinthians 5:21 God made him who had no sin [Jesus] to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. The mind-boggling consequence of this divine exchange is that the instant you surrender to the power of Christ’s forgiveness, you become in God’s all-seeing eyes as pure as crystal, as holy as God himself. The Judge of all humanity – the One before whom every human must one fateful day stand exposed to give full account – pronounces you innocent and would defend your innocence to the death. In fact, defending you to the death is exactly what your crucified Lord has done. The moment you yield to Christ, you gleam in heaven’s eyes with a purity so dazzling that it is way beyond what any virgin could enjoy who does not have spiritual oneness with the holy Son of God. Having restored you to pristine innocence, the Lord instantly exalts you to the status of divine royalty, making you a treasured child of the glorious King of kings, destined to reign on heaven’s throne for all eternity. Someone could hand you a check for a hundred million dollars and you pocket it, thinking it is fake and continue to live in poverty. Tragically, many Christians are like that. Christ has given us more than we can get our head around but because it seems far too good to be true, we hardly believe a fraction of it and continue to live in spiritual poverty. For us to be freed, we must believe that we truly are spotless virgins in God’s piercing eyes, and crowned with eternal dignity. Our self-image is far more critical than most of us realize. We use it to plot our course through life. If our self-image is faulty, we will never reach the heights we were born for because we will be wrongly convinced that we will never get there. I have found that people who are enslaved to depravity are usually those who cannot forgive themselves. They cannot rise from the mud because they see themselves belonging in the mud. And those who cannot forgive themselves are the very ones who cannot believe that God has forgiven them and cannot forgive those who have hurt them. The three types of forgiveness – believing in God’s forgiveness, forgiving oneself, and forgiving other people – move together. If just one of the three keeps you down, it will hold back progress with the others. If we treat someone else as unforgivable, it is little wonder that we end up worrying if we ourselves are unforgivable. The way we treat others boomerangs back to us. So do your best to work simultaneously on all three types of forgiveness. Even a little progress on one front will help inch forward the other types of forgiveness. Sex is highly addictive because it is divinely designed to cause a man and woman to be addicted to each other for their entire lives. Nevertheless, when Jesus is in our life, freedom is always open to us, no matter how impossible it feels. In fact, it is our spiritual birthright. This does not mean it will be effortless, however. Although God can, and sometimes does, instantly and painlessly remove an addiction, to do so produces spiritual weaklings. A link at the end of this webpage explains powerful reasons why God in his love and wisdom usually opts for us to endure a character-building battle with strong temptation. We will get nowhere sitting around wishing that breaking an addiction were painless. We must so strongly want to be free that we are willing to endure whatever pain it takes; knowing that the relatively short-lived withdrawal pains are nothing, relative to the pain and consequences of lifelong slavery. Every addict is tempted to think that another high will lessen the craving but the cold reality is that, despite the initial feeling of relief, each fix ends up inflaming the craving and deepening the addiction. Whether it be an addiction to self-harm or to abuse God’s gift of sex, the suffering it brings is like a drunk enduring hangovers and humiliation, losing his job, his house, his family and his dignity, in order to enjoy the “happiness” that alcohol brings. A final complicating factor is that whether you think of it as your subconscious, your inner child, suppressed memories, or something else, there could be a buried part of you that, in ways you are hardly aware of, is feeding a sexual addiction or hindering your efforts to break free. If these parts of you receive understanding, comfort and healing, you will be more empowered to fight the addiction because every part of you will be working toward the same goal. ♦ Conclusion It is highly understandable that hurting people end up in a destructive downward spiral of self-inflicted sexual abuse. Having briefly examined many factors contributing to this, you now have a raft of ways of reducing the pressure to self-destruct and regain the dignity and fulfillment you deserve. Each factor is treated in greater depth in the links below. To burst free, you do not necessarily have to address every issue mentioned but my goal in exposing these often hidden factors is to spare you the frustration and bewilderment of having to fight invisible enemies. Or think of it as if you were uprooting a bush. If you are strong enough, you might be able tear it out of the ground immediately. If it refuses to budge, however, you will have more success if you first loosen at least some of the roots. ♦ Hope The following is from a dear friend who had tried over and over and over year after year to break her sex addiction and failed. In her case, what had held her back was undiagnosed Dissociative Identity Disorder (see links below). That might not apply to you but she is free now, and what she has written is very applicable: For you to grasp what I am about to say, I must explain who my God is. He is the One True King; the universe-spinning, truth-making, all-knowing God of the universe. There is nothing he cannot do; nothing he does not anticipate; no super-villain he has not already brought low. There is more power in the pinky of one of his servants than there is in the whole world. If he says anything is right, it is truly right. Any who would gainsay him, haven’t a leg to stand on. So they easily fall. I am a child of this One True King. He gave me life. He is my Daddy. It is this that makes me valuable and worthy of honor. Anyone who would say otherwise is either deceived or is knowingly lying and deserves punishment for slandering the person God has made me to be. There was a time, however, when I listened to those liars. I took this body that my Daddy made for me and prostituted it. I took my soul and sold it to the dark side. I stood face to face and toe to toe with my Daddy’s enemies and joined their side. Yes, I willingly gave myself to demons and flaunted it in Daddy’s face. But not even this could decrease my value; just as a diamond surrounded by dirt does not decrease in value. I took the enemies’ side for so long that I thought that what they said about me was true. They said I was dirt and that the only way to get stronger and gain value was to sell myself to others. They forced me to have sex daily. They told me that that is all I was made for. I believed that lie. They told me that I enjoyed it. I believed that lie. They told me that I made men into gods when I had sex with them. I believed that lie. They told me that I liked it when they inflicted pain on me while raping me. I believed all of their lies. But this story expands much farther. There are so many people who think themselves to be worthless whores and think themselves empowered because of what they force others to do. Millions believe such lies. It is the work of my Daddy’s enemy, who lost his bid for godhood. Being a sore loser, he attempts to drag millions of people with him on his way out. He knows how much my Daddy delights in me, and to get back at Daddy he dehumanized me. He did this by telling me lies and by forcing me into situations that made those lies seem true. But they remain lies, and I am living proof of this. Since I started fighting the lies, I have found power that makes demons flee. I have discovered the truth that I am more than a conqueror. There is no battle I do not win; whether it be a battle for control over sexual impulses or a battle against self-harm. No, more than that, in all of these battlefields I have bloomed. Where there was once nothing but destruction and strife, innocence and beauty have blossomed. Where once there was a bid for false power, true power has risen. I am no longer defined by my desires. I have moved beyond merely hoping to get better. Instead, I am enjoying right now what God has made me to be. Much More Help Sadly, many people’s articles disappoint by offering little beyond pat answers or superficial help. Determined to serve you better, I have poured my life into providing you with all the encouragement and support I possibly can. The following will take you to relevant webpages and they lead to even more links in my quest to meet your deepest needs. Exploring links to links is rewarding but, in a website so vast, finding one’s way back to this invaluable list is difficult. So I urge you to save the web address of this webpage before commencing this adventure.

“Stronger Together” On the football field, the difference between winners and losers is teamwork. Unless committed to working together as a team, they will make such fools of themselves that they might as well go home. So it is with Dissociative Identity Disorder (also known as Multiple Personality Disorder). Alters (host included) either learn to work together as a close-knit, fully-committed team or the result is embarrassing. In the words of Jesus, “a house divided against itself will fall” (Luke 12:52). Many people with Dissociative Identity Disorder are in such disarray they can barely stay alive but when they learn to work as a team, they can achieve astounding things. For alters, team building is the gradual transition from disarray to power; from chaos to success; from embarrassment to glory. The process is lengthy but the results are phenomenal. The Stumbling Block The greatest obstacle to teamwork is alters unknowingly working against the good of the person. Often this is because the alter does not realize that one-time abusers no longer have access to the person and so they try to enforce the abuser’s former rules in order to protect the person from the abuser’s wrath. Priority must be given to discovering the exact reason for the alter’s behavior and then gently correcting the misunderstanding. Even with alters that are currently hostile to the extreme, however, it is important to respect them and believe they genuinely want to help but are confused as to how to go about it. Once you help alters see things as they really are, it is remarkable how quickly they change from acting as enemies to being the best friend you could ever have. General Guidelines for Teamwork Get to know each other. Listen to each other. Find out not just what each alter thinks but why he/she sees things that way. As already indicated, such information is vital in transforming frightened, confused, and even hostile alters into faithful, helpful friends. Where appropriate, apologize. When reeling in fear or pain, one cannot be expected to have the presence of mind to be sensitive to the feelings of other alters, but in the process they are likely to get shoved aside, treated as dirt or rejected as literally nothing. This ends up hurting not only the receiver but the one dishing it. It is important to realize how destructive this behavior is and to apologize and begin to demonstrate that one has changed one’s attitude toward alters. Comfort each other. In your powerful imagination, hug alters who need and want it. Let each share his/her secrets and heart-breaking stories. You might be reluctant to learn their stories but you owe it to each alter, since he/she bore those awful experiences for you . Each dear alter has been carrying the pain alone for all those years and deserves to no longer have to bear it alone. Moreover, there will be some alters – perhaps you – who will be able to bring immense comfort by interpreting the events in a less hurtful light, such as being able to bring the news that the abuse has now totally ended, or that the abuser was lying when he said those hurtful things, or that it was not the victim’s fault, and so on. This is a key part of making your alters strong and the stronger each member is, the stronger the entire team is. It is critically important that you respect each other’s confidentiality and not reveal secrets – even to therapists – without the permission of the alter who originally shared the secret. Certainly if the person is safe to share with, try to convince the alter of this fact but until the alter accepts this, you must keep the secret. This is part of the loyalty that is needed for trust and closeness and effective teamwork. If alters cannot trust you in this regard, they will clam up and healing will grind to a halt. Loyalty and trust are vital for effective teamwork. Baby alters will need to be mothered. Don’t see this as a burden but as a healing experience. It is you finally getting the nurturing you have been cruelly robbed of and inwardly craving all your life without even being able to define it. For similar reasons, you will need to play with child alters and provide them with toys and so on. It can be frustratingly hard to find sufficient time, but for your own development as well as theirs, you must find time for them to play. If they are kept in isolation they will remain young, weak and vulnerable but if you nurture them they will not stay young forever but after receiving enough of the comfort and attention they need and ache for, they will grow up. You also need to give learning opportunities to each alter. For example, when they are ready, you can teach young alters to drive while you guide them in this task and keep them safe. You can gradually teach them parts of your paid work – again under the guidance of those parts of you that are skilled at it. You will discover that even if you started off the expert and the other alters seemed complete idiots, some alters will end up better at certain tasks than you are and the result will be improved performance and less stress at work. General Guidelines for Teamwork Alters need to get together and discuss rules they will all adhere to. At the beginning, it might only be a small group of alters who are willing to do this, but it is a start and, in time, observing alters will be moved to join. Alters need to reach the point where they decide that peace is better than war and agree to go along with wishes of the majority. Then voting on issues becomes important. Rules should include how alters should treat each other. Here are some suggestions: * Alters always strive to be polite, kind, patient and loyal to each other. They are to value each other and strive to think the best of each other. * Alters are free to express their feelings but not in hostility directed at another alter. * It is not right for any alter to punish another. * For certain tasks it is agreed that specific alters are the most experienced and competent, and others who would like to contribute to those tasks agree to be guided by these experts. * Alters who are considered not yet ready for certain responsibilities – using the credit card, driving the car without another alter present, doing certain tasks at work, and so on – agree not to do so. In turn, those having these abilities agree to regularly review this to determine when the alter has developed sufficiently to assume various responsibilities. * It is understood that some alters tire easily, some are timid and so on, but all agree to keep working toward the goal of all being out together and asleep together, even though fully achieving that goal might be a long way off. * Alters with unique skills and/or knowledge will continually work both on training back-up alters and recording valuable information so that in an emergency another alter can pick up the task * Alters should try hard not to leave others in the lurch. Whenever they do anything – whether it be putting the keys somewhere, making arrangements to meet someone, or whatever, that information is to be shared with other alters. Even with the best intentions, alters can sometimes freak out and suddenly go into hiding, leaving the rest of the person without adequate information and/or skills to complete critically important tasks. Alters need to agree to try their hardest to remain out and if they must retreat, agree to at least remain accessible to other alters so that they can ask for and receive essential information in order to function without the alter. * Alters should discuss life goals, work goals, and so on and establish as many as possible that they agree on. When the majority agrees, they should make Jesus an honorary alter with voting rights. As they gain confidence with him they should vote on letting him have the final say if ever a serious or hotly contested matter arises. The Reward Writes a dear friend who has D.I.D.: The other day, I overheard two of the managers where I work talking about me. Here’s how the conversation went: “Ask her, she will remember.” “I wish I had her memory!” commented the other. “Yeah, she’s an encyclopedia!” “ . . . not only remembers but gets things done exactly as you need them. I want her on my team.” I was shocked to hear that. It wasn’t that long ago when I was accused of lying because I couldn’t remember conversations and other important things. There are still occasions when people say, “Remember this, you know, we talked about it . . .” and I do not remember. Now that my alters communicate with each other and are present more, however, the one who remembers will step forward and continue the conversation. Besides everything else, for the peace of mind alone it is well worth putting in all the effort that healing takes. Grab healing. Accept your alters. As you fully embrace them and support and encourage them you will discover that they are strengths not weaknesses. A weaker person would have died. A weaker person would have given up. You developed ways to cope with almost impossible situations. Dissociative Identity Disorder isn’t because you are weak, it is because you are far stronger than you realize and when you and your alters cooperate and learn to work as a team, the result is phenomenal. Related Pages What Alters Wish their Hosts Knew Advice From a Protector Alter Resolving Conflict With Insiders Dolls or Stuffed Toys for Healing D. I. D. Includes a divine miracle How to Turn Nasty Alters into Nice Alters And links Coping with Baby Alters