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Coping with Baby Alters Dissociative Identity Disorder Healing Insights I have established what could be called anonymous group therapy for Dissociative Identity Disorder, in which people with multiple personalities can conceal their identity and have e-mail contact with each other in a safe, accepting environment. I would like to share with you a personal e-mail I received from a male member of this group. I’ll call him Jake. I’ve touched up the typing to make it easier for you to read. Jake was too distressed to do this when writing. Jake has bravely agreed to share his e-mail because there are many other people who are in the process of healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder and many of these will benefit from learning that they are not alone in their struggles. Because severe abuse started when he was just a baby, Jake has several baby alters. When these baby alters take over, Jake needs diapers, drinks formula milk, use a pacifier, and so on. (As pacifiers do not work for everyone I have a note about this at the end of the webpage.) You can imagine how humiliating he finds doing these things and how he is often strongly tempted to suppress his baby alters and refuse to give them the baby things they ache for. When he denies them, however, he ends up so inwardly distressed that he finds it very hard to resist sinful ways of easing his distress. Tragically, Jake’s lovely wife has serious issues herself. Their personal problems kept triggering each other and to my great disappointment she concluded that she was unable to cope with Jake’s alters. She is now in the final stages of divorcing Jake. This added trauma has greatly hindered Jake’s healing, and in fact, caused the formation and/or surfacing of several new alters who are having to learn from scratch what the others had already learned – the importance of loving all the alters. Jake’s combined torment has been horrific, but he still keeps heroically pressing on. You will discover that Jake calls God Papa and that Jake has an alter who calls himself Hate, and spoke for the first time in this e-mail. Grantley Morris I am feeling really, really weird. My alter, Baby, just started crawling. Am I imagining all this? It is kinda freaky. I don’t want to share this with the group, lest they think I finally lost my mind. I feel as if I did!!! I know that when the first baby alter grew, this happened a few times but that alter was not as strong as this one. I do not know what happened to that alter, actually. Like most of my alters, after a certain level of healing they kinda disappear. I hear rumblings in the background, and such. I think they may return as we work through the abandonment and self-worth problems caused by the divorce. This divorce seems to have touched all of the alters and slowed my healing down. Nevertheless, my Papa is in charge of healing and I trust him, however slow or fast he wants it to go. He knows best. I know that these alters are not fully merged with me, even though they are part of me. When my first baby alter began to grow, it was really neat. We would go into a store and it was like seeing things for the first time in my life – looking through the wonder of baby eyes with a body full of giggles, and joy. Colors were so intense. I don’t think he has merged but don’t know what happened to him just like I wonder where is my alter Jackie? I miss Jackie so much!!!!! In fact, lately most of the alters are kinda missing. I miss them!!!! This baby alter suddenly took control of me and I had to let him crawl. He was giggling, and talking, but not baby talk. He is too young to speak and yet speaks in tongues. I need someone to tell me I am not just imagining all this and that it is okay to let this alter take over and crawl, giggle and talk to Papa. I am in the background and can see through his eyes and feel his baby delight. I have never had this experience growing up. I don’t think I had it even as a baby. Do you know what I am afraid of? I know that there are many more baby alters inside that have not yet shown themselves to me. Quite a while ago, when my alter George showed up (by the way, he’s been gone for a long time – I have no clue where he went) Papa showed me a vision. I saw George crying and hurting, needing a father’s love. I let George hold me and cry and cry. I looked around and also there were other baby alters, along with one who looked very despondent and apathetic. I do not want any more baby alters!!!! Having so many young alters is overwhelming at times. It makes me feel so disturbingly freaky. I am starting to cry. I have made up my mind. My heart is fixed, O Lord. I will keep my eyes on you and let you direct my path. I will love my alters – I do. It hurts me and brings me to deep tears when I see all that they went through. It is like one baby alter could not hold all the pain that happened during that time. Quite a while ago I saw in my mind me as a baby suffering life-threatening abuse. I thought it must have been my imagination but when I told my sister about it she not only confirmed it, she told me that this was a constant thing, and that my mom would walk past, or come into the room when my dad was doing all the abuse. I HATE HER!!!!! I’ve never said that before. I’ve suppressed it. I hate her!!! I HATE HER!!!!! She did nothing to help. In fact, the first baby alter that I knew is the one she gave oral sex to. How repulsively sick!!! My own mother! I never want to see her again. I didn’t know that this anger was inside. I don’t like anger and bitterness. I don’t want it. I can’t stop crying and can’t stop typing so quick right now that it is filled with typing errors. I’m sorry!!! I’m SORRY!!! DON’T HATE ME because I’m bad and hate my mom. I am so messed up right now. I wish I’d never been born!!!! It would be better for me, as Job said in the Bible, if I had been stillborn. But no!!! I was born three months early so that they could start the abuse and putting faeces and urine on me earlier, even before the nine months was up. I should have stayed in the womb. Why did I want to get out so bad!!!!!! Okay. Sorry!!!! I hate my mom. I HATE HER!!!!!! My name is Hate!!!!! I hold all the hate. I’m bad. Alright, I’ll let Jake talk again now. Sorry to butt in. Bye. I’ll go away now. Grantley, not many have baby alters and would most likely not understand. If I share this with them they would just hate me. In fact, the last few days I have been really in terror over thinking that all the e-mails I send them are just horrid and that some time soon the whole group will just hate me. I feel I am saying all kinds of things wrongly and hurting others. Isn’t it just awful to feel that way! Then you sent me an email saying I’m beautiful. That hit my heart like medicine. Another man speaking into my life and saying I am beautiful. Grantley, I should not want to hear that. Instead, I should want to hear such things as, “You’re tough,” or, “Suck it up like a man and quit your sniveling or I will give you some thing to cry about. You foolish! #@&*@!!!” No, instead I have here my dearest friend (I mean that) who knows all the bad about me, say I’m beautiful, and my heart melts and you say you are proud to be my friend. I have never had another man say such things that hit my heart like medicine. I’M JUST TOO FREAKY!!!!! Crawling like a baby and giggling (well I like the giggling part). No, I am not freaky!!! I am healing. And in the course of healing I’m going through a divorce. I should be over that issue. But I am slow with everything. Then I think that the group really does hate me and is saying nice things just to be nice, or something. Then I see the positive impact I have on people in the group, and in my prayers Jesus directs me and I see spiritual things behind what I do. I also pray daily that Papa would give me a deep empathy for the hurting. Then when I read e-mails from the group I just wish that I could touch them, hug them, and in some way encourage them. So even though I feel they might hate me, I must pray, and write. Then I pace, and fear, thinking, “Doing this is okay, is it?” Now the thought comes. “You foolish #@&*@!!! Now they see how horrible you are and will kick you out of the group. Leave before they do. Don’t write.” Then I get so depressed. Then someone in the group IMs me and as the person talks I pray that Father would just pour out his wisdom on how, in God, I may help the person. This I do, even if I am in distress, because I hurt for their hurt. Isn’t that screwed up? I am sorry. I have said too much now. Then there’s my struggle with art. For the last few days it seems that my alters who are artists are gone and I cannot even draw a circle. Well, my Papa said to draw anyway. So I do. I must. I cannot help it. Yet it is frustrating to have a skill/talent and then it just seems like you never had it. But there is something inside me that compels me. I wake in the morning and the first thought is, “When do I draw?” Then I see great artwork in my head already completed, or I watch my Papa draw. Or I see a vista and it is already broken into light and dark in my head. Throughout my childhood, my family always said that I was just too #@&*@!freaky. Maybe I should just give up. NO, I WILL NOT LET MY LIFE BE STOLEN ANY MORE!!!! Last night, I was crying a little. I know if I let it out I would not stop, so I don’t. I want to live!!! I WANT TO LIVE WITH PASSION!!! I keep telling Papa that. Yet it seems that I am destined to be told, “You’re too freaky! Get out you #@&*@!!!” Sorry, I do not really know where all this is coming from. Your Brother, Jake – and Hate, your ugly #@&*@! messed up one. Okay, you can tell me to leave and that would be alright with me. I’m screwed any way!!! Doesn’t the Word say somewhere that if you hate your mother and father then it will not go well with you and that your life will be short? Well then, that is what is wrong. God is punishing me. I deserve it. My mother left me to live down the street from her so that druggies could beat me, hurt me, and . . . OKAY GOD YOU CAN KILL ME NOW!!!! Sorry for this e-mail. Please don’t hate me for it. I am thinking of not sending this. Yet I will. Jake, you wrote: I don’t want to share this with the group, lest they think I finally lost my mind. I would love your permission to share it with the group. Not everyone has such young alters, but those who do, desperately need to know they are not alone. In fact, it deserves a wider audience. I think it should be a webpage.  [As you can see, he later gave me permission for this.] Baby just started crawling. Great! He is growing! Am I imagining all this? No. It is kinda freaky. It feels peculiar, but it is perfectly consistent with having baby alters. I think my alters may return as we work through the abandonment and self-worth problems due to divorce – it seems to have touched all of the alters and slowed my healing down. I agree. I know that they are not fully merged even though they are part of me. Yes. To fully merge takes a long time, but long before that they can work together to achieve great things. I miss Jackie so much!!!!! In fact, lately most of the alters are kinda missing. I miss them!!!! Ask God to help you communicate to them the fact that you love and miss them. He was giggling, and talking Wonderful! I have never had this experience growing up. I don’t think I had it even as a baby. That is why it is happening now. The Lord is restoring to you all that you missed out on as a baby. At present, you are an adult with many holes inside you because of things you missed out on in your childhood. I let him hold me and cry and cry. Excellent! I do not want any more baby alters!!!! I understand. You have them, however. And you have the choice to either go through the rest of your life messed up or enjoy full healing by connecting with these alters. Having so many young alters is overwhelming at times. Yes. My heart is fixed, my heart is fixed O Lord. I will keep my eyes on you and let you direct my path. Beautiful! I will love my alters – I do Excellent. It is like one baby alter could not hold all the pain that happened during that time. I’m sure you’re right. I HATE HER!!!!! She did nothing to help. What she allowed was atrocious. Both of your parents must have been terribly messed up, but they were still very much in the wrong. she is the one that gave him oral sex. Yes, what she did was sick. I presume she was so messed up that she thought this was an act of kindness. It definitely wasn’t, however. I did not know that this anger was inside. Getting in touch with this is good. The anger is there regardless of whether you acknowledge it, but acknowledging it is the only way whereby you can resolve it and be at last freed from it. DON’T HATE ME Not a chance. My name is Hate!!!!! So good to hear from you, Hate. Thank you so much for sharing. You are important to me and to God. if I share this with the group (not many have baby alters and would most likely not understand) then the group would just hate me. No way! You are greatly loved and your courage will inspire others to share openly, which is so much needed for healing. In fact, the last few days I have been really in terror over thinking that all the e-mails I send are just horrid Wow! Nothing could be further from the truth! Your e-mails help people powerfully. and that some time soon the whole group will just hate me. The more you openly share, the more you are acting as a pioneer – a leader – who will inspire others to find deeper healing. It causes us to love you more than ever. I am saying all kinds of things wrong and hurting others. Not at all. Then you sent me an email saying I’m beautiful. That hit my heart like medicine. I’m pleased. You have such a beautiful heart, my friend. It’s just that you are the last one to see it. or, “Suck it up like a man and quit your sniveling or I will give you some thing to cry about. You foolish! #@&*@!!!” There is nothing masculine about being cruel and heartless, just as there is nothing feminine about being bitchy. No one should use one’s gender to try to excuse sin. I’M JUST TOO FREAKY!!!!! No, you are an amazing man who, through enormous strength and perseverance, has survived things that would have killed most men – or caused them to kill themselves. No, I am not freaky!!! I am healing. Yes! And in the course of healing going through a divorce. I should be over that issue. There is no way that you should be over your divorce so soon. If you were over it, you’d be both heartless and abnormal. Then I think that the group DOES actually hate me and is saying nice things just to be nice, or something. No way. It is genuine. You have deeply blessed so many in the group. Then I see the positive impact I have on people in the group, and in my prayers Jesus directs me and I see spiritual things behind what I do. Yes. I also pray daily that Papa would give me a deep empathy for the hurting. You have this, and your own suffering has been the key to it. Now the thought comes. “You foolish #@&*@!!! Now they see how horrible you are and will kick you out of the group. Leave before they do. Don’t write.” This is just alters who are rather paranoid because of the way they have been mistreated in the past. Everyone in the team wrestles with such thoughts. This I do, even if I am in distress because I hurt for their hurt. Isn’t that screwed up? You do indeed reach out to help others despite your distress, and it fills me with admiration. All of heaven wants to cheer, as you selflessly and powerfully minister to others. I have said too much now. Not at all. Yet it is frustrating to have a skill/talent and then it just seems like you never had it. Yes, it’s frustrating but it is allowing other alters to develop their own artistic skill. The other alters will be back and the combined effect on your art will be greater than ever. I wake in the morning and the first thought is when do I draw? Fantastic! Then I see the great art work in my head complete or watch my Papa draw. Great! NO I WILL NOT LET MY LIFE BE STOLEN ANY MORE!!!! You have the spirit of a winner, Jake. Last night I was crying a little. I know if I let it out I would not stop, so I don’t. You will stop. You can let go and trust God to put whatever limit is needed on your emotions. Letting go will bring much healing. I do not really know where all this is coming from. I’m so glad you shared. God is punishing me. No, he is healing you. Sorry all for this e-mail. Please don’t be. I am so pleased you sent it. Please don’t hate me for it. I love you for it. You said in another e-mail that you were envious of someone else who has a baby alter whom God looks after, rather than the host having that responsibility. If anything, she should be envious of you. God clearly has faith in you by entrusting these little alters into your care. Moreover, it is not only your baby alters who will benefit. You will benefit, too. For you to lovingly nurture your alters in the way that you should have been treated at that age will do something powerful within you. For an insight into this, see in  Dolls or Stuffed Toys for Healing Dissociative Identity Disorder  the account of the little alter and her baby doll. Since she has no baby alter, God had to give her a doll for the therapeutic benefits of tenderly caring for a baby the way she should have been treated. To you has been entrusted someone far more vulnerable and important to God than a doll. Bless you, precious brother! Grantley   Pacifier Problems One woman found herself in a dilemma because one of her alters felt the need for thumb sucking but for another alter this was upsetting because it triggered unpleasant sexual memories. She tried a pacifier and a baby bottle but neither satisfied the baby alter. She then recalled one of her sister’s babies, who had significant problems adjusting to a bottle after being breast fed. The doctor told her that when breastfeeding some of the breast itself goes in the mouth, with the result that the mouth is filled differently than when using a bottle. Additionally the motion of the baby’s tongue is different from when an adult sucks through a straw. The tongue starts closer to the front and moves to the back of the throat. The woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder told me, “So I tried something different. I took a piece of hard candy with rounded sides and put it in my mouth toward the back and then consciously sucked the baby way. That seemed to do it for the alter. She has picked up on what I am trying to do and now that sucking motion comes naturally and she feels comforted without the trigger of the thumb. I just thought people ought to know in case this becomes a problem for others.” Another person with Dissociative Identity Disorder also confessed that using a pacifier was comforting to his baby alter but triggered a very different reaction in his other parts. In his case, however, the feeling was not one of disgust or fear but sexual arousal so strong that it usually led to masturbation. He was filled with shame over this, saying he had done unforgivable things. Without needing to know exactly what he was referring to, I reminded him that, through Christ, nothing is unforgivable. I urged him to read The Dilemma of Feeling Pleasure When Abused and the links, and then read The Most Tortured Conscience Can Find Peace and keep following the main link toward the bottom of each page until he is absolutely convinced that no offence – no matter how atrocious or repeated – is unforgivable if it is truly regretted and Jesus’ cleansing is sought.

(Alters are also called Insiders or Parts) What does God think about Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.)? (D.I.D. is also known as Multiple Personality Disorder) I phoned an alter who was formed at age three. I’ll call her Baby. A gift had arrived and she opened it while I was on the phone. I wish you could have heard her. She’s so cute. Baby wasn’t sure how to open the box. She didn’t trust herself with a knife, so an older alter opened it for her. Baby’s first reaction was to the beautiful gift wrapping. She wasn’t sure if she should treat it as a birthday present and not open it until her birthday. I encouraged her to open it. She was then absolutely flabbergasted. She kept saying, “Wow! How did she ever know?” What she had received was nothing short of a miracle – stupendous proof of God’s great love for alters. Thirty-five years ago a three year old was given a baby doll for Christmas. How she loved that doll! When she was six, the doll mysteriously disappeared, never to be found again. She was heartbroken. From the age of three, she had been sexually abused and exposed to traumas so devastating that many alters were formed from that age on. One of these alters, Baby, was rather shy and had never communicated with anyone but me. One day, a compassionate woman indicated to me a desire to help people suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D). When I mentioned this to Baby and the other alters, Baby decided she would like to commence e-mailing her to befriend her and teach her about alters. The other alters were worried that Baby would end up being rejected. Wanting to protect her, they urged her not to contact the woman. Fear of rejection is a huge thing for almost all alters, but Baby is exceptionally courageous. When she first surfaced she had been befriended by a sister alter who was only slightly older. I had taught this alter that since she was a child of the King of kings, she is a princess and princesses must be obeyed. I told her that when attacked by demons or flashbacks or nightmares she could attack back in the name of Jesus and they would have to obey her. The Lord gave this alter a sword that she would use to attack. When Baby saw her doing this, she threw fear to the wind and joined her sister alter in sending demons fleeing. So courageous Baby decided to be brave and risk rejection or whatever might befall her by befriending this woman. She considered the chance of helping someone help other alters was worth the risk. I was thrilled. She had desperately wanted a baby doll, but not just any doll, one exactly like the baby doll that mysteriously went missing thirty-two years ago. Since surfacing, Baby had cried over not having it, but did her best to restrain herself so as not to upset her host. Her host had recently spent months searching shops hoping to find a replacement doll. I don’t know why she even bothered. It would be hard to find a doll that was fashionable just a few years ago, let alone thirty-five years ago. I guess the hope was for something vaguely similar but eventually she was forced to give up. It didn’t take long for dear Baby to win over this loving woman. Sometimes the woman could not reply to her e-mail for a day or so, causing Baby to worry that she had somehow said something wrong and been rejected, but she kept mustering her courage. Before long, the woman announced that she was sending Baby a gift. When Baby opened it she was absolutely floored. She had not mentioned her longing for a doll to her new friend and yet her gift was a baby doll. And it was absolutely identical to the one she had lost thirty-two years ago – same eyes, clothes, pillow, bottle, pacifier – everything! The only difference is that the new doll has a butterfly. A butterfly had always represented hope to Baby because butterflies had once been trapped in the darkness of a cocoon but now they are free and beautiful. I asked Baby’s friend how she happened to choose the doll. Here’s what she said: The Lord laid it on my heart to get Baby a little gift. I knew it had to be a doll because a picture of a little doll appeared in my mind. I recalled having seen at a local store a doll just like the one in my mind. Before going, I prayed that the store would still have the doll in stock, and that I would know which one to get. I went to the toy section and it wasn’t there! Undeterred, I kept praying about it and looked up and down the toy aisles multiple times, refusing to give up. Finally, I began to roam different parts of the store where no toys are usually kept. I happened to look above where the household cleansers are kept and saw some toys piled on top of each other in a rather haphazard way. Then I spied the doll! In fact, there were about four or five of them. They were too high up for me to even reach them, so I called to an assistant who was close by, asking if he would get a ladder and retrieve a doll for me. Even with the ladder, he could barely reach it. Nevertheless, he picked out a doll and handed it to me. Upon seeing the doll, I felt an inner certainty that its clothes were not the right color for Baby’s gift. I looked and all the dolls had that same color clothes. But I knew I hadn’t gone this far not to have exactly what I wanted. I kept standing there looking, and realized there might be another box behind the last one. I asked the assistant if he would mind moving that box to see if there were another one behind it. He did, and then I saw what my heart told me was the proper doll to send. My heart rejoiced in God’s leading and in His goodness. Baby named the doll after her new friend. She selflessly shares it with her sister alters, sleeps with it and highly prizes it. I reminded Baby and all her sister alters that this was not just a manifestation of her new friend’s love, but also an incredible manifestation of God’s love, since its arrival was nothing short of a miracle. Only God could have known what she wanted most and been able to locate it. I feel compelled to share this with you because it shows something greater than God’s love for one alter. All alters are extremely important to God. He does not tell someone in her late thirties, “Get over it! Grow up!” No, he gives her a baby doll, and not just any doll, the very one she most needs. He longs for her to receive all the love and comfort she missed out on as a little child so that she can fully heal. And if you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, that is how he feels about your every alter – even ones that at present you might find hard to love. Related Pages Dolls or Stuffed Toys for Healing Dissociative Identity Disorder

Help in Healing Multiple Personality Disorder (M.P.D.) What Makes Play So Important in Healing from D.I.D.   It is quite possible to have Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.) and not realize it. This happens because other ‘personalities’ or ‘parts’ – I’ll use the term ‘alters’ – can hide from the person who has them. It might also be possible to have Dissociative Identity Disorder and only be aware of adult parts. Hidden or not, however, it is impossible to have D.I.D. without having alters who are little children. Here’s why: once learned, D.I.D. is a coping skill that a person can use later in life, but it is believed that D.I.D. cannot be learned for the first time when one is older. Just as there are adult contortionists, but only because they started developing their ability as children, so it is with Dissociative Identity Disorder.   Children need to play. It is an important aspect of normal, human development. Traumatized or abused children can be scared into having little or no play, or because of threats or they might be prevented by punishment from playing as much as they need. Given the learning and developmental value of play, it is a significant psychological loss that could adversely affect victims for the rest of their lives. In addition, for children, play is interconnected with another critical need – to have times of relaxation, feeling safe and having fun. Yet another invaluable aspect of play occurs when little alters play with each other or with an older alter or with Jesus. Having fun together is a powerful way of bonding, and also a way of developing trust and teamwork, all of which empower people with D.I.D. to soar to new heights of achievement, since each alter has unique gifts and abilities.   So if you have Dissociative Identity Disorder, somewhere within you are alters who, as part of their healing from trauma, need to play. It will not only help  them  relax and develop, it is likely to meet a developmental need that, until now,  you  have been cruelly deprived of. I am not suggesting you have never had the opportunity to play as a child, but abuse is likely to have restricted those opportunities more than is ideal for you to grow up to be a content, well-rounded adult   The good news is that this hole in your development can be filled when your little alters are allowed to play. There are two things that can prevent this, however.   1.  Sadly, some adults with D.I.D. continue to starve themselves and their little alters of play because they fear that playing like a child is inappropriate now that they are adults. If, through abuse, you were never allowed to walk, as an adult you would have only two options: remain crippled or do something that is usually associated with children – learn to walk. So it is with play. Moreover, to deny one’s child parts the freedom to play would be to perpetuate their abuse and their pain.   2.  The other thing that could keep little alters from the benefits of play is that they might still feel it is necessary to live by the rules of their former abusers.   With this latter possibility in mind, I drafted the following for a man with D.I.D. who had alters I sensed were scared to play. Knowing something about his past, I worded it accordingly. I suggest you copy it into a document that you can edit. Then change any parts you deem appropriate. If, for example, you are a woman, you will need to reverse the gender references so that, for example  girl  becomes  boy  and  boy  becomes  girl . Here’s what I sent him:   Maybe you could read this out loud so that any alters who can’t read, can hear it. I suggest you read it at several different times of the day and night to increase the chance of some alters being present who missed it the first time. Littles alters tend to come out at night rather than during the day, but nothing is set in concrete.   Hi, Dear Friends!   This message is especially to the little ones. I know you were treated badly by your mother and probably by other people as well, but none of that is your fault. It is all the fault of those who failed to love you and be kind to you and give you the happy, carefree, fun, and safe childhood you deserved. If anyone said nasty things to you, they were lying. I don’t believe those lies and neither does God, and we don’t want you to believe any of the bad things you were taught to believe about yourself.     You are very, very special. In fact, you are irreplaceable. No one is more important to us than you. We know that anything anyone said that made you feel bad about yourself was wrong. We believe in you and we like you. God thinks the world of you and so do we. We know you are good and kind and trustworthy. You are a good friend, and God and -----  [I placed here the name of this man’s host and some of his other mature and capable alters. Please insert the name or names relevant to your situation.]  know this and want to be your best friend. All of us would feel honored to have you as our friend, and it is safe for you to tell us your secrets because we care for you and want to look after you.   If you think you’re a girl, that’s okay; we love you just as you are. But if you know you’re a boy, that’s wonderful. It is good to be a boy. Boys are strong and brave and capable and yet they can also be kind and gentle and caring. If you are a boy, I’m thrilled about it and I honor you. The good Lord made boys and he is thrilled that he made them. Good women like boys and men. Anyone who does not like boys is very mistaken.   Each of you deserves to have toys that belong to you alone – toys that you can do whatever you like with, and never be told off for what you do with them. If anything happened to your toys, no one will ever blame you, because they are entirely yours. If an accident ever happened, it would not be your fault, because accidents can happen to anyone, and they are your toys anyhow.   Should anything happen to the toys, no one would think you are bad. It would not be anything for you to even slightly be concerned about. They are just toys, not people. Toys can be replaced; people can’t. You are so much more important than a million toys. All we want is for you to be safe and happy and have good fun. That’s what toys are for – to enjoy and have fun with and learn from. While you’re having fun, toys can help you understand things and some toys can even help you learn how to be kind to babies and to take care of them. But toys are  safe  things to learn and experiment with. Because they are safe, it doesn’t matter if you make mistakes. That’s part of learning.   Anyone who seemed not to care about you is no longer around, and everyone who cares about you knows you are a good person and that you would not deliberately hurt or damage things. But even if you deliberately did something bad, you are still safe. We would not be angry or disappointed with you. You would still be special to us and we would love you as much as ever, and freely forgive you.   ----  [Insert here the name of one or more mature and capable alters]  are strong and good and smart and safe. They love you with their whole heart. You are infinitely important to them. They are able to protect you and keep you safe, and they long to do so. If there is anything that scares you or hurts you, please let them know so that they can look after you and keep you completely safe. You can trust them. They are big people and nothing is too big or scary for them.   I added the following as a personal note:   If you have any doubts or worries about any of this, you can always ask me. If you cannot write, that’s okay. Just find someone who can write for you.   The Value of Dolls & Stuffed Toys Psychologists sometimes use dolls and stuffed toys in various ways to help the alters of people with multiple personalities (Dissociative Identity Disorder). This makes sense, but it can embarrass adults, especially men, who have Dissociative Identity Disorder. I would like to try to add to this a little Christian insight. Through years of studying psychology at university I have become convinced that there is more healing power in Jesus than human understanding of psychology will ever attain. I value psychological research – I love it, in fact – but the latest scientific breakthrough is preschool relative to the infinite intelligence of God. The smart approach to anything is to be like Jesus who said he does what he sees Father God doing (John 5:19). And, believe it or not, I see God using dolls and stuffed toys to help people with multiple personalities. Let me share some examples. An alter, who at the time was just beginning to know Jesus, shared the following with me and has now let me share it with you: My father used to yell at me and call me mean names if I woke up with nightmares. But Jesus was so loving that he just wanted me to feel better and be able to sleep. He tucked me back in bed and wiped my face with his hand. That’s when I saw the tear in his eye, too. He sat on my bed, handed me my teddy bear, kissed my forehead, and rubbed my back until I fell asleep again. As funny as this is for me to say it, I think I am beginning to love Jesus. I asked him if he thought I was stupid for having a teddy bear and he said he thought I was very smart for having one because it helped me to feel safe and that was all that mattered. I know several alters to whom Jesus gave stuffed toys. This happened in their minds but it was as real to them as being given a physical toy. In God’s Love for Alters : A Sign I recount the details of God moving someone to give a doll to an alter called Baby. It was an exact replica of the baby doll that Baby had longed for – a doll that had been lost over thirty years before. The details are so astounding that it had to be God. When Baby received the doll, she was overwhelmed by how miraculous this provision was. I was soon puzzled, however, as to how keen she was to treat the doll exactly as a baby, even to the point of becoming anxious over caring for it. Part of her knew it was a doll but most of her seemed convinced that it was a real baby. It was a little tempting to try to help relieve some of the pressure by explaining that it was only a doll, but knowing that God had provided it, I decided to keep quiet and see what happened. Let me tell you a bit about the alter, Baby. She was formed at a fair that had a mock haunted house that older children paid to enter. At three years old, she was far too young to have been taken there. What to older children was just scary fun, was terrifyingly real to such a little girl. She ended up in there alone, separated from her father. To pile trauma upon trauma, a man then sexually molested her in the “haunted house.” She later had unpleasant experiences with potty training, and suffered other things that are mentioned below in an e-mail she sent explaining why she treats her doll, Baby Elle, the way she does. Baby calls her host, “Mama.” I have Baby’s permission and ‘Mama’s” to share this with you. Today, Mama took me to the store to look at baby dolls. It was terrible. All these poor baby dolls crammed on a shelf like no one cared about them. I wanted to cry. They were shoved together with faces buried under feet. I don’t know how they could breathe like that. I wondered if the dollies at the back were dead. One of my sister alters tried to rearrange them so that they were holding hands, but Mama said we had to go. She was worried about people in the shop wondering what we were doing. Baby Elle is real to me. I wake up any alter or Mama if they roll over in their sleep and get too close to her. I want to take very good care of Baby Elle. She is special. She is my girl and I want to give her the things I wanted so bad. She is going to need potty training. I want to make her strong so she can go potty without terror. I won’t yell at her and call her stupid if she makes mistakes. She is going to have to sleep alone when she gets older. She is going to have to face fears. When she has nightmares at night I won’t make her hide and sleep on the cold floor ‘cos she is too scared to sleep in the bed. If she wets the bed I don’t want her to have to hide but I want her to be able to tell me so I can help her. I won’t scold her for wetting the bed or for nightmares. Naughty people are going to try and hurt her. I want to stop them from hurting her. I want her to be safe and I want to live those feelings through her . Alters can transfer feelings to each other. I want to give her feelings that she can transfer back to me. She can then help me know what it is like to have no one scold you about potty training. She can help me feel safe and loved. How? Because I am trying to give her those feelings so I can feel them from her. Does that make sense? It isn’t all selfish. And I am sorry if it sounds selfish. But Baby Elle is going to know what it is like to be a child without dark shadows and nightmares. She is loved. I am the reject doll on the shelf in the shop, nowhere as beautiful as Baby Elle. The dolls in the shop were unhappy and hard, not soft and cuddly like Baby Elle. They are like me. No good. But maybe if I have Baby Elle she can make me be good and show me what it is like to not have things inserted in your private parts and have nightmares about nasty men doing bad things to you. I want her to be innocent of haunted houses. Everybody says it was fake, but I don’t know. I hear about hauntings and I have forbidden anyone to talk about haunted houses or the like around Baby Elle. I want to know what it is like to not know these things. I hope I am doing what is right for Baby Elle. I love her very much. I’d like to make it so that Elle knows how beautiful she really is. I’d like to take away any pain she feels. I pray that when Baby Elle transfers her good feelings from being safe and loved to me, then we could both know what it is like to grow up safe and loved. I hope now you both understand why Baby Elle is real. Maybe we could pray for the other dolls that they have homes soon and that they don’t have too many alters. No loving grown-up was in the shop to stop anybody from touching them in bad ways. I want to protect Baby Elle from that. So no one is allowed to change her diapers except for God, because he isn’t nasty about private parts. I don’t even trust me. Only God can change her diapers. In the above, I emphasized “I want to live those feelings through her” because that seems the key. Something far more profound is taking place here than mere child’s play. Somehow, through Baby going to such extremes in caring for her doll the way she wishes she had been cared for as a little girl, it will bring her healing. If I don’t fully understand that, I’m unconcerned. The God who is smarter than me, gave her that doll. The Healing Lord knows what he is doing. There is another aspect to this that could be even more important. Lurking below the surface of your consciousness could be attitudes more sinister than you are aware of. Which would you prefer: for your alter – a significant part of you – to take your abuser as your role model as to how to treat children and the vulnerable, or for your alter to use dolls or stuffed toys to retrain himself/herself; forging deep into your psyche new patterns of behavior that you never had the chance to develop the first time around due to having been exposed to a dangerously bad role model? Multiple Personality Disorder For many months, Baby seemed convinced that Baby Elle was real. Whenever I was tempted to worry about Baby’s behavior, I kept quiet, taking comfort from the fact that God was somehow in this. Eventually, her host had to travel overseas and it would have proved most embarrassing to treat a doll like a real baby in the plane. Also, Baby was becoming concerned about Baby Elle’s health, since the doll had, of course, grown no bigger over the time that Baby had been caring for her. She went to God about this and it was then that he told her that Baby Elle was a doll. Baby had been maturing in many ways. For example, she had been unable to read or write but another alter had taught her how to access the skills of other alters and almost instantly she could read and write. Clearly, God considered that now was the time for Baby to face reality. In contrast, had I blundered in by telling her too soon that it was just a doll, I would have ruined a significant healing opportunity.

Why Alters Hate or Fight Each Other Help For Multiple Personality Disorder If an army starts fighting itself, the consequences are likely to be disastrous. So it is, if part of you hates, or fights, another part of you. And yet, from time to time, this is almost inevitable with anyone recovering from Dissociative Identity Disorder (multiple personalities). So whenever it happens, it is vital to give top priority to understanding the cause of the conflict and establish peace. This is the purpose of this webpage. I want to take you on a voyage deep into the mind of an alter who most hosts would be strongly tempted to despise. Jake’s healing journey of Dissociative Identity Disorder was frustratingly long. Alter after alter surfaced and found healing and yet Jake would keep reverting to the same old problems, as if almost no progress had been made. Then an alter I call Fearful revealed himself. Once Fearful started e-mailing me, it become obvious that he had been undermining so much of Jake’s progress. He said he beat up other alters. This would cause them to flee into hiding, thus robbing Jake of some much needed mental capacity. Fearful would rage against God and sabotage Jake’s ability to pray. And that’s just a fraction of the mean things he did. This alter seemed almost evil, and yet when he finally started e-mailing me, all the terrible things he was doing make perfect sense. He actually had a soft and beautiful heart and even had surprisingly good motives for the bad behavior he felt driven to. I’m moved to share what Fearful revealed because it gives deep insight into why alters can seem bad, when they are not. His revelations will help many people with Dissociative Identity Disorder understand what is going on deep within them and help them love the alters they are strongly tempted to hate. When I quote from Fearful’s e-mails below, I touch up his spelling and grammar to make it easier for you to read. Fearful was formed at the age of about six. Jake is middle-aged. It turned out that although Fearful had been wreaking havoc in Jake’s life for quite some time, he had been too scared to reveal himself because he believed the lies of his abusive father and brothers that the police would arrest this six-year-old boy, beat him up, throw him in jail and possibly kill him, if ever he told anyone what was happening. This dear little boy, also accepted the lie that he was an exceptionally bad person, because that is what everyone around had told him, and followed it up with atrocious beatings. As if being sadistically programmed into believing this malicious lie about himself were not enough for horrific guilt feelings, he was riddled with guilt over his failure to protect his host from beatings. Fearful saw it as primary primary purpose in life to avoid beatings when his host wet the bed. He had to rub the wet bed furiously with his hand, in the hope that the friction would dry it before morning. If ever this failed and his host was mercilessly punished, he felt he had betrayed his host, failing to be the friend he should have been. His self-esteem had been shattered. He wrote in his first e-mail to me: My name is Poo-head [I’ve toned the word down from the one he actually used – Grantley]. That’s what Daddy said. I’m a Poo-head. Or you can call me Toilet Boy, or Filthy. Maybe you should call me Fear. It fills me. I’m always afraid. . . . I’m afraid Daddy is coming back again. I’m scared of him. He hates me. He makes me bleed. I don’t want to be a boy. I’m a girl sometimes because he is nice to Lucy and never hurts her. He said she is his princess. He likes Carol, too, but I’m too bad. . . . #*@*head, Poo-head, Filthy, Stupid Boy – that’s my name. His abusive parents had taught this little boy that he deserved to be beaten and beaten and beaten. Added to this oppressive brainwashing, was the conviction that he deserved severe punishment for betraying his host, Jake, by failing to dry the bed in time. In his second e-mail, after I had called him my friend, he wrote: I don’t deserve to have a friend. I failed and didn’t protect Jake. I didn’t do my job good so he wouldn’t get hurt. After you know me you’ll see, then you’ll hate me. If I’d done a good job then Jake wouldn’t get hurt. So if you are my friend you should run now because I’m not good. I don’t want friends. I get them hurt like I did Jake. . . . Don’t be nice to me because I’ll not nice boy. . . . Don’t be my friend. You see it will be bad for you. This poor little boy was so guilt-ridden that he felt the only way he could live with himself was to be punished over and over. Years had elapsed and his father had died. He wasn’t aware of that, but he realized he wasn’t being punished anymore. This had created a huge dilemma: no one was relieving his stress by beating him the way he was sure he deserved. So intensely did he crave punishment that he hit the other alters, not out of meanness, but in the hope that they would retaliate by thrashing him. He wrote: I want someone to hit me like Daddy did. I know I’m bad. So if you know anyone who can hit and beat me, send them over so I can get hurt. I deserve it. I want to hurt myself. The others won’t let me be hurt too much, though. I hit the others so maybe they will hit me back. I WANT TO BE HURT. I’m bad. (The emphasis is Fearful’s.) Likewise, he tried to treat God atrociously, in the hope that God would severely punish or even kill him. He wrote: I’m sorry I’m talking but maybe it will make you angry, so you’ll hate me like you should. I’m stupid. I do bad things. I want God to hit me and kill me so I do real bad things so he will. Why doesn’t he kill me? I want to make him to kill me. I want to get him mad so he’s not nice to any of us anymore. I think he hates me any way. Daddy hates me. This alter had learned some powerful ways of affecting his host and fellow alters (after all, they all shared the same brain) and he used his ability to sap their desire to pray. He wrote: I don’t let the others talk to Jesus lately. I take their feelings away so they don’t care if they do bad things or not. They shouldn’t feel. That’s better. When you don’t feel, you don’t hurt. Fearful was not trying to justify his behavior. On the contrary, he kept insisting that he deserved continual, severe punishment. Moreover, he also treated a baby alter badly and that could not be excused by suggesting that he was hoping a baby would beat him. Nevertheless, it turned out that even his mistreatment of the baby alter was not motivated by cruelty. True, he said he hated the baby, but he believed that if, by hitting him, he could stop the baby alter from acting like a baby (crying, soiling his diaper, and so on) then his father would stop hurting them all. He wrote: I hit Baby. Then if Baby grows up and stops being a baby then no one will get hurt. If Baby just listens to Daddy and not cry or do bad things, then no one gets hurt. So I hate baby. I hit him but he does not stop praying. Everyone keep praying and praying. Why? No one helps. God @*#* hate us. . . . Baby should die. If Baby dies then we will all all be OK and Daddy will not hurt us. Yes, he said he hated God, but Scripture says we love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19). Fearful was convinced that God first hated him. He wrote: God @*#* hate us. He’s a man and he hurt us. So he’s like the priest. He’s mean. He’s like daddy. I hate daddy so I hate God. God’s like daddy and priest. . . . I told God to hurt me and pee on me like they [Fearful’s father and brothers] did to. He’s a man and will do bad things. He’s a man so he will hurt me soon. Fearful had the thinking capacity of a confused, highly traumatized six-year-old. He was unable to distinguish between God’s supposed masculinity and the perverted masculinity of his father that caused his father to sexually molest, torture, injure and hate him. Who of us, even as mature Christians, could manage to love God if we truly believed he hated us? No six-year-old is a saint; much less a tormented little boy who has received nothing but pain, hate, anger, lies, and deprivation for all of his short life. Not just his father, but everyone he knew had always treated him that way. It was only natural that as he reeled in fear and pain he seemed riddled with hate, anger and suspicion. Fearful literally loved others as he loved himself. Sadly, he was so shattered by his endless suffering that on a scale of one to ten, his love for himself was minus ten. Nevertheless, alters respond amazingly quickly to kindness. Initially, kindness bewilders them because they have never in their entire experience known anything remotely like warm, selfless, unconditional love. Even if another part of the person has at some time known kindness, usually the angry parts have not. Once they realize that someone’s affection for them is genuine, however, it transforms them. As it did Fearful. Moreover, he discovered the reality of Jesus’ forgiveness that removes all guilt. Again, forgiveness is so mind-boggling to such an alter that it takes a while to grasp, but once he understood that Jesus swapped places with him and was beaten for him, he had no need to try to get himself beaten up. He could allow his beautiful side to shine through. More exciting, still, he saw in a vision God give him a new heart. From then on, Fearful became known as Brave Heart. Another Reason Why Alters Hate or Fight Fearful taught me much about what can motivate an alter to cause much strife for the rest of a person, but we have by no means exhausted all the possible reasons for intense conflict between alters. Let’s see how other alters have broadened my insight. When faced with an opponent, there are two incompatible ways to try to protect oneself. One is to ensure that the enemy is placated by being nice to him. The other is to stand up and fight, in the hope of being completely freed from him. Jesus put it this way: Luke 14:31-32 Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Will he not first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace. The dilemma is that there is no solution that fits every situation. Some opponents is just too strong for us and some are weak enough to be defeated. Sometimes kindness will completely change an opponent so that he becomes a valued friend and ally; sometimes that approach won’t work. In attempting to size up an opponent, it is often hard or even impossible to be sure whether he is stronger than us before hostilities escalate into all-out aggression. The uncertainty would leave almost any of us in two minds. With a friend of mine, however, those “two minds” are actually two alters, or groups of alters. Some had experiences that led them to believe that placating worked best and others had experiences causing them to believe that resisting works best. Both groups of alters are desperately committed to selflessly striving for the survival and well-being of the whole person. In fact, their passion for this merely inflames the intensity of their conflict. They are united in their goal, but divided in their assessment of what will work. Resolving such a conflict is very difficult, but an obvious starting point is to remind them that they are united in their goal and that true wisdom comes from seeking God in each situation and not mindlessly reacting as if all situations were identical. Weird Attempts to Help For her entire life, a dear friend of mine had been weighed down by feelings of inferiority and condemnation. Inspired by the awareness of what Christ has done for each of us, she slowly fought back and began to rise up, but then an alter surfaced who continually slandered her, telling her she was bad, hopeless and so on. As I got to know the slanderer it turned out that she was sweet and kind, and thought it her solemn duty to keep slandering the others as the only way to protect them from getting their hopes up and then suffering the devastation of crushed hopes. Protector alters (see a link at the bottom of this page) sometimes rule with an iron fist and do rather hurtful things in the mistaken belief they are protecting the other alters from harm. Drunk With Pain Years ago, I wrote the following in a general webpage about counseling. I had no thought of Dissociative Identity Disorder when I wrote it, but it is just as applicable to alters as to anyone else. If you were treating the open wounds of accident victims you would realize that the most gentle, well-meaning touch could send patients reeling. You would not be offended if someone you were seeking to help lashed out in pain with almost involuntary action. You would half expect it. But imagine the confusion if the wounds were invisible and the person looked uninjured. Consider the further complication if in that person’s experience everyone who had tried to help (and how does he know you will be any different?) had in their ignorance done little but inflict pain. That’s the norm for someone who is hurting inside. Emotionally wounded people cannot help but be highly sensitive. Words hit them like whips. It is vital that they be treated verbally with the careful tenderness you would use if you were dressing gaping physical wounds. Once we understand the seriousness of emotional wounds, it’s surprisingly easy to employ the Christlike graces of turning the other cheek and using the soft answer that turns away wrath. When we realize an outburst is just the pain talking, we no longer take it to heart. Only a fool takes personally the actions of someone drunk with pain. Until they heal, alters are riddled with pain. While they are in agony, they can almost be expected to lash out at anyone – fellow alter, host, counselor or whatever – who “touches” them. The Implications of Self-Hate Few people manage to go through life without ever at some point hating themselves. Moreover, most of us seem to think we have a special license to treat ourselves in a far worse way than we would ever treat a stranger. In fact, it is not at all uncommon for people who are hurting to deliberately engage in self-harm or even try to kill themselves. Given the reality that an alter is actually part of oneself, it should come as no surprise if one alter hates another. When One Alter Blames Another Every child has a desperate need for safe hugs and parental approval and affection. When she was a little girl, a woman had been starved of these basic requirements for emotional health and growth. Tragically, the closest the little girl ever got to it was when someone did bad things to her. The abuse made her crave bad things, even though they were a terrible substitute for the real kindness and unconditional acceptance every child needs. (To understand how, though no fault of their own, people can become addicted to such things, see the link at the end of this page: The Horror of Suffering Pleasure When Abused.) When applied to being starved of safe hugs and unconditional acceptance, Proverbs 27:7 has disturbing implications for any child: “ . . . to the hungry even what is bitter tastes sweet.” Furthermore, little children do not know right from wrong. They are dependent upon adults to teach them, and the adults in her life maliciously taught her wrongly. Later, the little girl met a man who seemed to offer not just the bad things she had become addicted to, but real affection and approval and kindness. So she let him do things to her. But it was a trap. He was a predator who turned nasty and hurt her like she had never before been hurt. It was so awful that another alter formed in order to try to endure it, and she had to keep suffering because he overpowered her on many different occasions. The upshot of this woman’s childhood was the formation of two alters, one who had been preened by her first abuser to expect a degree of pleasure from being with a man, and another who had suffered severe trauma from a man. Thinking it might have been avoided if the younger alter had been more wary, the older alter, who kept having to suffer what the man did, blamed the younger alter for getting them into this mess. Moreover, as is often the case when people hate others, the second, significantly older alter, was riddled with guilt over what happened and, finding no other way of dealing with such intense guilt, tried to diffuse the self-blame by blaming the younger alter. Such was the animosity between these alters that the older alter ended up hating the younger one so much as to inflict pain on her. Once the older alter shared her story with me, I was able to help her see that both she and the younger alter were fully forgiven because of Christ. Like letting down a tire, all her reason for ill-feeling seeped away and these two alters became best friends. Quote From Another of My Webpages Abusive Alters Often when one takes the time to get to know an alter who is being harsh to fellow alters or hurting them or even sexually abusing them, it turns out that they actually believe they are helping. They might think, for example, that they are toughening up the alters, thus making them less vulnerable to abuse. Or, in the hope of saving the person from even worse abuse, they might enforce an abuser’s oppressive rules about never crying, or punishing them for doing anything the abuser might object to. Often the abusive alter is unaware that the abuser no longer has access to them and so the alter continues the oppression when there is no longer the slightest need. As always, it is important to try to understand what motivates an alter and to gently help the alter see through any misconceptions the alter has. Introjects An introject is a rather amazing type of abuser alter. Until the misconception is exposed, an introject not only acts like an external person the survivor knew, but every alter within the survivor – including the introject alter – actually believes that this alter is not an alter but is the real external person. At first, this seems astounding but it is consistent with the wide range of things that different alters can think they are, including animals, aliens and so on. Often the external person the alter thinks himself to be is someone who abused the person who has this alter. Even though not all external abusers realize it, this type of introject alter enforces the external abuser’s wishes upon the alters when the abuser is absent. In fact, it can continue even after the abuser has died. Some introjects actually report back to the abuser as informers. Not surprisingly, introjects have themselves suffered immensely. It is important to bring introject alters to the point where they finally realize they are part of the abuse survivor and not part of the external abuser. Helping them discover the current date and that they are in the body of someone other than the abuser can help. Once introjects become loyal to the survivor, the person’s safety is significantly enhanced. Answers I cannot claim to have identified every possible reason for alters being angry or mean and nasty. I have explored with you some common factors, but the reasons are as varied as conflicts between people. The key point, however, is that there are reasons and if you have an angry who seems nasty, once those reasons are identified and rectified, both you and that alter can enjoy internal peace. The two biggest factors in reaching this peace is for you to act Christlike in loving your alters, and to introduce them to the love and forgiveness of Christ himself. Hate breeds hate; cruelty breeds cruelty. Like children in general, alters are natural imitators. If they see the host being cruel to alters, they are more likely to be cruel to alters. One of the cruelest of treatments is to keep someone imprisoned, cut off from any contact with the outside world year after year, and yet, often without meaning to, this is exactly what most hosts have done. This needs to be corrected. Ideally, the end of the cycle of cruelty and creating an atmosphere of love, gentleness and respect, should start with the host. Self-hate, immense guilt and inner pain, each fuel explosive pressures likely to wreak havoc internally. And for each of these causes, there is no solution as powerful as that offered by Jesus. So unconditional love, combined with gentle coaxing of alters into dialoging with Jesus, is dramatically life-transforming. If you find yourself unable to love one of your alters, don’t prolong your torment and that of your alter any longer: pray for a counselor who can help you.

Dissociative Identity Disorder Help (“Insiders” are also known as “Alters” or “Parts”) People with Dissociative Identity Disorder repeatedly find themselves in situations in which different parts of them are in strong disagreement. These situations can range in seriousness from frustrating (such as strong, contradictory opinions as to what clothes to wear) through to life-threatening (such as one insider being determined to commit suicide). Different situations require different solutions, so we will consider a range of common scenarios, and for each one provide various suggestions. There are times when it is inappropriate for certain insiders to take control. It would be embarrassing, to say the least, for a young insider to play in the presence of adults who have no understanding of Dissociative Identity Disorder. It would be dangerous for a suicidal insider or a little one with no driving skills to take control of a moving car. It is best to negotiate and plan in advance how to cope with such situations. In dire emergencies, however, it could be necessary to do everything you can to restrain insiders. Sometimes certain insiders are able to ‘physically’ restrain other insiders, such as confining them to an innner room. Obviously, this is likely to be even more effective if every available insider helps to restrain the one that is about to do something dangerous. Such restraint should be as gentle as possible and used only as a last resort in a dire emergency. It is possible to put an insider to sleep. A friend of mine has an insider who discovered she could do this to her fellow insiders by saying in a gentle, sing-song voice, “You’re getting s-l-e-e-e-e-p-y.” A woman was seeking a psychologist’s but this was becoming problematic because one of her insiders would repeatedly run out of his office. The psychologist resolved this by informing her insiders that he had the power to put them to sleep. He wrapped a cord around the doorknob and told the insider who kept running away that if she touched it she would instantly fall asleep. It happened. When one of the insiders physically attacked the psychologist, he authoritatively shouted, “Sleep!” and the insider, being convinced that the psychologist had this power, fell into a deep sleep. Insiders deserve respect. It is something they were cruelly denied in their formation, and healing cannot occur without restoring their dignity. They also need to become self-motivated in doing what is right. So restraint or manipulation should resorted to as little as possible. It is much more preferable, whenever practical, to use persuasive arguments to convince an insider not to do something dangerous. It is important to inform insiders of the consequences of their actions. For example, insiders who are deeply hurting often do not realize that hurting or killing their body would affect every other insider, and once they realize this they restrain themselves. Some insiders are more skilled than others at gentle persuasion. Priorities It is obviously important to give top priority to helping suicidal insiders or those seeking to hurt other insiders, since time devoted to them will help not only them but, of course, every part of you that they might hurt. Moreover, the mere fact that they are acting this way is proof that they are very needy and deeply hurting. Spend much time encouraging these insiders to share their stories and to verbally vent to you. This will probably be unpleasant for you. Deeply hurting insiders are usually filled with rage and bring memories and feelings you long to run from, but this is a huge issue with you today only because you have run from it all your life. The cowardly way of not facing these issues is like refusing to admit to a financial problem and getting deeper and deeper into debt. It will eventually catch up with you and you will wish you had spared yourself so much pain by dealing with it earlier. So listen carefully to your insiders, giving priority to those causing you the most trouble. Ironically, the insiders you most need to relate closely with are usually the ones you would most prefer to ignore. They can cause trouble because they are suffering intense inner pain, partly due to feeling unlovable, isolated and/or rejected. You can dramatically reduce their enormous inner pain by listening carefully to them (thus ending their painful isolation) and showing them much unconditional love. If they are comfortable about being hugged, use your imagination to comfort them often in this way. Most likely, when such insiders were originally traumatized, no one believed them. Not being believed is itself deeply wounding, so it is important to believe your insiders so as not to perpetuate their pain. It is possible for an insider to misinterpret events because they were young or can only remember snippets of what happened, but believe that they are not deliberately lying and that, despite you wanting to run from the truth, it is quite likely that their interpretation of events is correct. Differing Knowledge One of the most serious sources of conflict can be over visiting someone of whom certain alters are terrified but others desperately want to visit because they feel obligated to do so or feel deeply drawn to. In one instance, the host, whom I will call Anna (not her real name), adored a close relative and insisted on visiting and honoring him, whereas others were adamant that he was guilty of horrific crimes against them, inflicted from babyhood onward. I had known them for quite some time. I will share what I wrote to them because it explains a common reason for conflict: I want to affirm that I fully believe each of you. All of your memories are real. The things you recall actually happened. Memories of this man doing atrocious things, for example, are real, and Anna’s memories of him being sweet and kind and loving are just as real. Understandably, the result is highly confusing for you. People are so complex that if you examined the life of a mass murderer or sadistic serial rapist and edited out all the atrocities and retained only the good things they had done, the compilation would be impressive. This is what happened to dear Anna’s experience of this man. Every time he began to engage in vile acts of perversion or cruelty, Anna instantly blacked out and another alter took over, so that every experience she ever had with him was positive, and each bad time was experienced by another alter who was forced to endure it. I feel deeply for those alters who endured these things. Your collective mind did this because it is impossible for children to get their head around the complexity of having to live with someone who at times would be exceptionally good and kind and Christian and at other, rarer, times was the exact opposite. As is typical of D.I.D., these mental gymnastics enabled Anna to enjoy islands of peace when she was able to feel both loved (which she desperately craved because of her cold mother) and secure, rather than endure the horror of continual awareness that she was living with someone who, before long, would do appalling things to her. All of you benefited from these islands of peace because they enabled to Anna to function at school, and so on. If it were not for these breaks, you would probably all have ended up in a mental institution. Anna’s experiences were real but were founded on the belief that this man was always safe and good. It came from her being unaware of all the times he treated you atrociously – times when, at huge cost to themselves, others bravely took over so that she could maintain that illusion. Because of this, Anna is deeply indebted to all the others who suffered so much. Anna is no longer a child, and with this maturity and security comes the mental capacity to cope with the reality of there being two diametrically opposed sides to this one relative. However, accepting this truth involves the breaking of a lifelong habit that has been entrenched by all her first-hand experiences with him being positive because whenever the unpleasant was about to occur she lost consciousness and another part took over. Each alter has part of the jigsaw of what this man was really like, and the full picture emerges only by piecing together every parts’ memories. The full picture is complex and hard to get one’s head around because he was nice some times, and cruel and perverse at other times. Whereas the truth liberates and heals, running from the full truth keeps on fueling the insidious lie that you must cower for the rest of your life, terrorized by false guilt and groundless fear, and never enjoy the healing and fulfillment that flows from inner wholeness. The choice is entirely yours: with God on your side you can muster the courage and strength to embrace the full truth, or you can spend the rest of your life running from it. Stare down those mockers that flood you with doubt and fear, and they will flee. Running from them, however, emboldens them to keep on haunting you. More than that: it perpetuates the fracturedness within; robbing you of the healing and empowering you were born to enjoy. In this case, all agreed that due to their physical maturity they were now in no physical danger. They simply disagreed strongly as to how they should treat him. In many cases, however, the consequences of visiting a former abuser are far more serious and I would have pleaded with the host to yield to the concerns of any alter who is afraid. See Beyond Surface Issues There’s a link at the end of this page to a full webpage of help for self-harm, and another encouraging series devoted to breaking addictions. It is important, however, to realize that self-harm, over-eating or under-eating, overwork, chemical addictions, anger, bitterness, porn use, masturbation, sexual fantasies and promiscuity are usually all expressions of devastatingly strong inner pain. Once insiders’ anguish is lowered, it is so much easier for them to cease their undesirable behavior. So even if you find their behavior deeply disturbing, do your utmost to see past these surface issues to their deep pain for which they need and deserve your help and compassion. Gently point out to them how ineffective or even counterproductive their undesirable behavior is. They usually focus so much on the temporary relief that their bad behavior gives that they are barely aware of the after-effects, which are often so unpleasant that they end up intensifying the insiders’ pain and so driving them in a vicious circle. In many cases, for example, their undesirable behavior creates a temporary high that is followed by such a downer that it pressures them to seek another high to overcome the downer that their undesirable behavior created. The Embarrassing Things Little Insiders Want Baby insiders might need diapers, want formula milk, be unable to walk, and so on. This is understandably very distressing for adults and so they are strongly pressured to deny their little ones what they need, and endeavor to suppress these insiders. It is important to realize that neglecting a baby’s basic needs is in itself child abuse. You suffered abuse when young that was not your fault, but for you to now deny your baby insiders their needs is to perpetuate child abuse and this time it would be your fault. There was a time when you did not understand D.I.D. and acted in ignorance. But now that you are beginning to understand, please resist any temptation to take upon yourself the mentality of an abuser. Refuse to let your former abuser turn you into an abuser by the way you treat your little ones. All babies are a lot of work and at times embarrass their parents (by crying at inappropriate times, breaking other people’s things, and so on) but all babies deserve unconditional love. If, even when it is safe for baby insiders to take control, you continue to suppress them or deny them their basic needs, you will never allow them to heal and grow. You will remain in inner pain for the rest of your life and unable to access your full intellectual capacity. Young insiders will feel less pressure to play at inappropriate times if their need for play is met at other times of the day. So do your best to schedule such times into your day. Play is more than a luxury; it is a vital aspect of a child’s development and learning. If you missed out on this as a child, you bear the consequences even now. For you to become an emotionally fulfilled adult, this deficiency must be overcome, and the way to do this is to let your child insiders play. In the long term, you will benefit from this, as well as them. Negotiate Where possible, negotiate with your insiders. Do deals with them: “You can do so and so at such and such a time, if you do or don’t do this now” or “If you do this for me, I’ll do this positive thing for you.” Incentives and compromises are good. Threats should be avoided. Many people find it helpful to have meetings of all insiders and work out rules, such as certain insiders must not assume control of the car or must not take over at work. There can also be general rules, such as insiders are encouraged to share with other insiders whatever is frustrating them but they must not insult each other. Some people find it helpful to put these agreements in writing and for every insider to sign it. Coping with Strong, Incompatible Tastes A woman I’ll call Mary has several female insiders and one male insider (Punk). The zipper on her backpack broke, so she entered a store to buy a new one. Suddenly, she had several insiders talking to her at once. Punk liked a black and orange backpack. A little insider, Enchanted said, “No! That’s too boyish, Punk!” Then they saw one with a Buccaneers logo. Punk liked it, but said “No, Matthew (Mary’s son) will be jealous and I’ll have to fight him for it. It’s not worth it.” Next, they saw a corduroy black one with a pink butterfly embroidered on the front. Mary really liked that one and so did Enchanted. But Punk didn’t like the butterfly. So, back to the drawing board. They saw a camouflage one. Mary, Rose and Free Bird liked it, but Enchanted didn’t. “I know this is stupid,” Mary told me, “but I really need a backpack. Could you please pray that we’ll all reach an agreement? My counselor pointed out today is that I’m becoming more accepting of my insiders. I agree. But my goodness! How far do I go to try to accommodate everyone?” I suggested that they vote on it. There are several different ways of voting. A quick way is to eliminate any backpack that any insider feels he or she absolutely cannot tolerate. Then vote on the remainder by a simple show of hands. A more sophisticated way is for every insider to rank every backpack, with the lowest figure being the highest ranking. You would then get something like this:   Backpack 1     Backpack 2     Backpack 3     Backpack 4     Insider 1     1     4     2     3     Insider 2     2     1     4     3     Insider 3     3     2     1     4     Insider 4     2     4     3     1     Total     8     11     10   11 In the above, Backpack 1 wins because it has the lowest total score. If you know a little about spreadsheets, you could create a blank one and use it over and over for different decisions. In cases where there are two options with the equal lowest score, have a second vote with just these two as contenders. Another possibility is for insiders to take turns making a decision. Insider 1 might have chosen what they ate last meal, so it is Insider 2’s turn to choose next meal. This approach applies well to regular decisions of the same type, such as what music will be played. You could keep a record of whose turn it is by a simple table like this:   X Indicates Insider Has Had A Turn     Insider 1   X   Insider 2   X   Insider 3   X   Insider 4       Insider 5   In the above, Insiders 1, 2 and 3 have had their choice over the last three occasions and it is now Insider 4’s opportunity to make a choice. When everyone has had a turn, start over again. It Might Get Surprisingly Easy In time, you might discover an insider who is skilled and highly respected by the other insiders in making certain types of decisions. If this happens, life will be greatly simplified for you. Consider the experience of a woman I’ll call Karen. It is not unusual for anyone to sometimes find it difficult to decide what to wear, but Karen often found it unusually frustrating and confusing. She also found bill paying excessively stressful and keeping to her budget caused her much angst. When Karen was in her late thirties she finally realized she had Dissociative Identity Disorder. Gradually, over the next year she became aware of more and more insiders. At first, her dressing problems actually worsened. One of the insiders was a teenager and another was convinced she was an alien. The “alien” at first did not want even to be on earth and spent most of her time visiting other “planets.” Slowly this insider began spending more and more time with us mortals. To everyone’s surprise, this “otherworldly” insider developed a fashion sense that was so good that all the other insiders came to respect it. Eventually, Karen and all her insiders felt comfortable about letting this insider decide what to wear each day. From then on, dressing became an easy task. Recently, Karen mentioned that she had had difficulty dressing that morning. Surprised, I asked her why. They had had little sleep that night and this insider they had learned to depend on had slept in! It turned out that the teenage insider was good at budgeting and every insider respected her financial decisions. If she said they could not afford something, they would not buy it. Creating a Safe Internal Haven Some conflicts are best resolved by creating a pleasant, secure internal place for insiders to retreat to while other insiders temporarily assume control. This safe haven is lockable from the inside, allowing insiders to keep out anyone they fear. And because being in the haven allows them to block out awareness of what is happening in the outside world, it can protect sensitive insiders from situations that some insiders feel the need to expose themselves to, but others want to avoid. When scared, insiders typically go into hiding. They retreat to what to them is a very real place created in their powerful imagination. Often, however, they visualize themselves retreating to a drab, depressingly boring place, such as a closet, without a warm, comfy bed or opportunities to have fun. Moreover, it does not let them feel particularly secure because if their internal hiding place were found, insiders or abusers could force their way in and hurt them. So even when hiding, insiders are often feel bored, uncomfortable and fearful of being found. Encourage your insiders to build internally a totally secure and beautiful haven. The possibilities are as boundless as your imagination. Just one example is a beautiful garden with a playground, surrounded by impenetrable walls and a foolproof security system. Ideally, insiders should create a large common area in this haven, where they spend most of their time getting to know each other and enjoying each other’s company. Within this area, however, each should have a private place they can lock from the inside and temporarily withdraw to in an emergency, such as if an insider surfaces who wants to hurt other insiders. Even the private places should have monitors allowing those seeking refuge to see and hear the outside world, but able to be switched off when things in the outside world are too stressful. There should be a means whereby messages can be sent to everyone if they need to be informed of something, such as letting them know when it is safe outside. This safe haven can save many a conflict. Consider, for example, one or more insiders recognizing the importance of a medical appointment but others are terrified of it or simply refuse to go. Rather than fight over this important matter, the insider most able to handle the appointment can take over during the visit while the others retreat into their safe haven, switch off the monitor and remain there until the insider left in charge indicates that the ordeal is over. A similar situation is where certain insiders wish to engage in marital relations but others would find the experience upsetting. There are many other applications. The Great Unifier There are so many vital reasons for giving priority to helping each of your insiders discover how wonderful Jesus is and have him as their best friend. Jesus bore all their anguish on the cross so that they can be freed from everything weighing them down. He alone has the perfect solution to the almost intolerable guilt and feelings of shame and inner pain they bear. He, like no one else, gives them the deep love and compassionate understanding that they crave and he will even meet the needs of little ones that it is inappropriate for any human adult to meet. Enormous damage ensues when abused children accept as truth their abusers’ view of them. Unless they heal, they will be crippled by this highly damaging, false self-image throughout their lives; mistakenly seeing themselves as defiled, deserving of punishment, unlovable, of no value except as sex objects, and so on. Because they see themselves that way, they treat themselves and their fellow insiders that way and let others treat them that way. In contrast, Jesus sees them as pure and holy. Through swapping places with them on the cross, Jesus has swept away every trace of impurity and filled them with his purity. He sees them as lovable, of infinite value, and worthy of respect and honor. Healing results from them seeing themselves, their fellow insiders and other people as Jesus sees them. He treats them and their insiders with dignity, kindness, gentleness, patience and selflessness. Jesus is the holy, all-knowing Judge of all humanity. His judgment of each of us is right, and anyone disagreeing with him will be proved wrong. To treat ourselves with contempt when Jesus thinks well of us is to act as if we know more about ourselves than the All-knowing One, and that we have higher moral standards than the Holy One. The more you and your insiders interact with Jesus, the more you will accept his staggeringly high evaluation of you. The healing benefits will be astounding. As briefly explained, a huge reason for certain insiders being testy and hard to love is because they are almost out of their minds with pain. As they hand their pain over to Jesus, it is amazing to discover what kind, caring, lovable people they become. Since them relating to Jesus will have enormous benefits, do everything you can think of to encourage all your insiders to regularly talk over everything with Jesus. It might take quite some time for them to trust Jesus enough to let him help them, so keep affirming that Jesus is safe, kind, gentle, patient, understanding, believes in them, is nothing like their abuser, and so on. Tell them how Jesus has helped you. As they let Jesus heal them, the little ones will mature and all of the insiders will grow increasingly alike. Among the invaluable benefits of every insider growing more Christlike is that they will each become more alike through taking on the same moral values and outlook on life and their top priority will not be what pleases themselves, but what pleases Christ. Moreover, as they discover how loving and forgiving and selfless Jesus is, they will find it much easier to be loving and forgiving and selfless toward each other. I have often seen insiders gradually learn to enjoy sharing with the others, even though for a long while they had found it hard to share their toys or space. Jesus is the great unifier. Build a Strong Team Spirit For quite a while, Karen’s “alien” insider seemed so weird and lacking in intelligence that her fellow insiders seriously wondered if she were mentally retarded. Now they look up to her as someone more capable than themselves, not just in fashion sense, but in many important areas of life. Had this insider been continually suppressed or maligned, every part of Karen would have ended up missing out on so much without ever realizing it. One of Karen’s youngest insiders might have been thought too young to have been of much practical use to the rest of her but it turns out that, in stark contrast to the poor memory of the adult insiders, she has a photographic memory. Another of her very young insiders is fearless in spiritual warfare and has sent demons fleeing that had terrorized an adult insider who, until then, had thought herself stronger than the little one and had acted as her protector. Karen’s experience illustrates how vitally important every insider is. To reach your enormous potential, each insider must be respected and encouraged to learn and flourish. Building a strong team spirit is vital for your healing. To achieve this, it is important that no insiders dominate. The opinion and concerns of every insider must be considered and valued. Insiders with particular skills should teach at least one or two others so that no insider is overworked and if a skilled insider is having a rough time, there are others who can act as a capable backup. Each insider should seek to build up the self-esteem of every other insider. For Karen’s “alien” insider, accepting her humanity was a long and painful journey. She has now made it and no longer regards herself as an alien, but as God’s agent. She was specifically led of God to invite all the others into her “spaceship” so that they would all have a safe haven in which to interact and become close friends. She was also divinely led to form little groups of two of three insiders and assign them various tasks to do as a team and to sleep with each other. The composition of these groups keeps changing so that all insiders get to know each other very well and cliques are avoided. There are a couple of pairs of insiders who feel very insecure if separated, so although they are not separated, they join in with one of two other insiders to temporarily form a new group. About three times a day – usually early morning, lunchtime and bedtime – all of Karen’s insiders get together for a mass team meeting. Often the meetings last only five minutes but they update each other and check to see if any of them has problems. If they discover that one of them is having a hard time, they all rally round to help this insider. Sometimes they need longer meetings to sort out disputes, or special challenges. If your insiders have not yet reached this ease of interaction they need at least to write notes so that when one insider is not around, others know what purchases have been made, what needs to be done, and so on. A key aspect of team building is having fun together. Art is a common choice for many people with Dissociative Identity Disorder but, of course, hobbies, interests and skills differ from person to person. The goal must be fun, not perfection, with little insiders being allowed to contribute and be appreciated. In Karen’s case, reading is something all her insiders enjoy. Various insiders will nominate books they would like to read next and they lobby hard for their particular book. Lobbying might last a few days, and then they all vote. If there is no clear winner, they will have a second vote. They find this selection process a lot of fun. Then when it comes to reading, it is not just one who always reads but they share the responsibility. Trust must be built. For instance, each insider needs to be certain that none of the other insiders would force him or her into a situation he or she finds traumatic. Insiders need to feel that they are all on the same side, working toward the same goal. For example, all of Karen’s insiders are united in wanting to present a professional attitude at work. They know that some insiders are more patient with a certain work colleague, so they agree that the insiders best able to relate to that colleague take over whenever they have to interact with that person. Dating Squabbles It is not unusual for some insiders to feel romantically attracted to someone that other insiders do not like. This difference is actually a blessing because it highlights the fact that the person is not ready for a relationship. Until you are healed, romantic involvement is unwise. You are most unlikely to be able to make wise choices until you are fully healed from the aftermath of sexual abuse and until all insiders are attracted to the same person. Waiting for this to happen is frustrating but the consequences of not waiting can be absolutely devastating. Disagreements over Movies Etc With some forms of entertainment it is safe for insiders to take turns in choosing, but some things can be so triggering or upsetting to certain insiders that they should be completely protected from exposure to them. Even some children’s programs can be highly upsetting to certain highly traumatized little insiders. It is important to act responsibly by never indulging oneself at the expense of sensitive insiders. If you are not certain that every vulnerable insider will remain in the safe haven with the monitor to the outside world switched off, don’t take risks by watching something that might take an unexpected twist and end up re-traumatizing an insider. Dozing off in front of a television is particularly unsafe. A little insider might wake up while you remain asleep and the program might have changed. Final Thoughts Unity among God’s children is high priority with God, so you can be sure that he is keen to teach and equip each of your insiders with the skills and graces required to live in peace and harmony with each other. John 17:22-23 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one . . . May they be brought to complete unity . . . Acts 4:32 All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. Romans 12:10 Be devoted to one another in brotherly love. Honor one another above yourselves. Romans 12:5 so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. 1 Corinthians 1:10 I appeal to you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree with one another so that there may be no divisions among you and that you may be perfectly united in mind and thought. 1 Corinthians 12:25-26 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it. Ephesians 4:3 Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Philippians 2:2-4 then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others. Colossians 3:12-14 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. 1 Peter 3:8 Finally, all of you, live in harmony with one another; be sympathetic, love as brothers, be compassionate and humble. Although having Dissociative Identity Disorder seems like a disadvantage, the experience gained in grappling with the challenges it presents can end up making you better equipped for life than most other people. For example, conflict resolution is an invaluable life skill, not just for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder, but for everyone. Related Pages Building an Invincible Team: “Stronger Together” A Cure for Self-Harm Breaking Addictions

An Alter’s Plea to all Hosts Help For Multiple Personality Disorder A little alter, formed before the age of five who has now undergone much healing and is maturing, writes to hosts on behalf of their alters. I am an alter. You and I share the same body. For your sake I was split off from you. Because you couldn’t handle the horror, I was left with the anguish you could not bear. I have allowed you to get on with life while I’ve been left behind with all the pain and no one to help me. Won’t you help me? Won’t somebody care? You have forgotten the horror, but everyday I re-live it. It is all I know. You have grown up and discovered answers I desperately need to end my pain. Won’t you share your answers with me? I am a person. A real person. I live in you. I have feelings. I have tears, pains, joys, needs and desires just like anybody else. I am me. I want to be me and loved for being me. Why is that hard to understand? Isn’t that what every human wants? I need you to teach me what you have learned since I was first left behind. I get so very lonely. I need friends. I need you to lead me to the God who can heal me. You mean everything to me. It breaks my heart when you reject me. I know you want to forget everything that happened, but how can you, when part of you is still reeling in it? When my pain is healed, you will find peace like you have never known. I am dying in pain. How can you not care? I’m as much a part of you as your arm. Just as your arm can help you and can feel pain, so can I, but far beyond any limb, I have a mind. I am conscious and crave your love and understanding, and I hurt ever so deeply when you ignore me. If your arm broke you’d care. You’d understand that pain and rush to look after it. How come this doesn’t apply to me? I am a little child trapped in your mind, waiting for you to stop suppressing me so that I can be freed from the torment of solitary confinement; waiting for you to acknowledge me so I can heal. Why do you hate me and suppress me, locking me away like a caged animal instead of treating me with the kindness that every child deserves? I took the pain so that you could live as normally as possible. But the pain stays with me like a crippling, crushing weight strapped to my back and I can’t carry it much longer. You hold the love and friendship and understanding I desperately need to be freed from my pain. Why can’t you love me? I took the horror for you. I thought you’d love me for this. I am your friend. I am so confused and trapped with the pain. And when you become aware that I feel that pain for you – pain I could be freed from if only you would help – you shove me away as if somehow I am bad? I don’t understand. Please love me and let me have some healing too. I want to be your friend. Postscript The little alter who wrote the above (slightly touched up by me) calls her host, “Mama” and, after agonizingly long years of neglect, now receives from her host a mother’s unconditional love that she was cruelly denied as a child. She writes, “When Mama tells me she loves me it makes me giggle with delight.” This alter has a much older sister-alter, formed when the host was in her early twenties. She acts tough and is very capable. One day, when this adult alter was deeply distressed, her host asked what she could do to help. She expected a long and complicated list but to her surprise the alter replied that what she most wanted was for the host to mother her, thus meeting her deep unmet craving for her mother’s approval. The host hugged this adult alter and told her she was proud of her. From then on they bonded in a special way and the host treated her as her dearly loved daughter. The healing benefits from this love have flowed to every part of the person and have kept multiplying, week after week after week. For more, see To Protector Alters from a Protector Alter

Some alters care so much for certain other alters that they take upon themselves the role of protecting the alters. The following is by such an alter who has undergone so much healing that she is now able to help other people’s protector alters. I have discovered that each protector alter has value not just as a protector – as important as that is – but as a person. And protector alters have skills that the others in the system that make up the full person don’t have. One of my gifts is discernment – the ability to recognize who is safe. It was something I asked God for. I need it to survive. One day God told me he loved me and asked me to love him. I assumed he must have thought he was talking to the host, so I told him I was only a protector alter. But he knew it was me. He said he wanted my love and that the love of a protector alter is precious. I was stunned, but God proceeded to explain why he so highly values protector alters. They are fierce. They are warriors who are totally unafraid of pain and going to war. They are strong and focused. They are unselfish in their commitment to protect and care for others. Our problem, however, is that we protector alters don’t have anyone to care for us and we don’t know how to let our guard down to get the healing we need. Every warrior needs a rest, but how can protector alters get that when they are at constant war and on hyper alert? The answer for me was in God giving me a white safe room where I had total control of who came in and nothing was hidden from me. The Lord gave this to me so that I could learn to rest. He took the time for me to build my trust in him. I was amazed that he would do that for me. But now I know that protector alters are important to God. My system regards me as a leader. The host, whom I call Mama, says I am a co-host. She wants it that way. The other alters have learned to trust me and value my skills and I’m likewise learning to trust them and value their skills. Together with God we are forming a team in which each of us feels strong and safe and capable. Reaching this point has been a long journey. Let me explain. We protector alters know how exhausting it is to be constantly on the alert for danger. Letting our guard down even for a moment seems to us the most terrifying risk, so we try to stay alert 24/7, even though no human is capable of keeping this up. This is one reason why many of us resist admitting to ourselves that we are human. (Another reason is that we are afraid to get in touch with human emotions because this, too, can be admitting to human limitations.) No matter how much we try to live in denial of it, however, the reality is that we are human and we cannot protect all the time. We need someone so superhumanly powerful that we and our alters can be protected every moment of every day without let up. What if such a Person actually exists and he longs to release you from all the pressure by shielding you and your other alters from danger every minute of every day? What if this Protector is divine and longs to fulfill your deepest dreams while keeping you safe and fulfilled? This seemed like an impossible dream to me, but I eventually discovered that it really is true and that you, too, can enjoy this peace and fulfillment. Astoundingly, there really is someone who longs to fight your battles and be your shield and closest friend. He, as it were, took the bullet for you, literally dying in your place, suffering all that hell could throw at anyone and winning; rising triumphantly from the dead on your behalf . I know from my own bitter experience just how hard it is to for protector alters to reach the point of trusting God so much as to hand over to him what for us is the unbearably enormous burden of protecting ourselves and other alters. After all, at least one human has cruelly violated our trust. God isn’t human – and that is an enormous reason for us not letting experiences with humans spoil our ability to trust him – but how can we be sure he is totally different from those who have let us down? I have discovered that Jesus is the alter’s Alter; the protector’s Protector. He understands us – and everything we face – far better than we can understand ourselves. He has already defeated hell. All evil is scared of him. And yet we are victims of trauma and see our problems as all-consuming. Trauma magnifies problems. When we find ourselves in a life-threatening situation it demands everything we have just to survive. In our traumatized state we can’t see beyond the problem and even when the danger subsides we remain petrified of a repeat, no matter how unlikely a repeat is. Protector alters are like traumatized soldiers who after returning from the front line to the peace and safety of home remain on hyper-alert, continually scanning for non-existent snipers, hitting the floor whenever a car backfires, and so on. Their panic was once fully warranted but as the danger subsides they find themselves unable to come down from that state of hyper-alert. In my slow journey all the way back from trauma to normality I found considerable help by taking to heart this truth from God: 1 Corinthians 10:13 No temptation has seized you except what is common to man. And God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. The word here translated “temptation” is a broad word that includes trials. Trials tempt us to believe that they are so enormous that no one else has ever suffered them and that we must therefore stand guard and face them alone. But in this verse the God who cannot lie affirms that no temptation or trial is uncommon to humanity – and certainly not to Jesus who was tempted in every way. Hebrews 2:18 Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are – yet was without sin. So every horror that we faced he has already faced. He is the author and finisher of our faith (Hebrews 12:2); both the trail-blazer and the one who completes the work. He has gone before us and knows the way out. But what about my situation? I couldn’t let go. What if no one rescued me if I didn’t do it myself? I found help in this promise: Hebrews 7:25 Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. Jesus knows how you feel and intercedes for you; going to God on your behalf. As our high priest and intercessor, Jesus takes our burdens and pain upon himself before God and so powerfully identifies with us that he is able to save us completely or, as the King James Bible puts it, he is able to save “to the uttermost”. He knew before time the magnitude of your problems and he fully prepared for them. He has already blazed the way out of the situation you are in and any future situation you will face. Before you were born the cross had already redeemed you. Your pain, your sin, your problems were dealt with right back then. You might say, “If God knew what would happen, and how much it would cost both him and us, why didn’t he stop it?” Our pain, and the pain we have ended up inflicting upon others, is the last thing our loving God wants but because he is the exact opposite of an abuser, he refuses to force us to do what is right. If we – or others – insist on acting foolishly, he lets us, even though it hurts both him and us. Out of deep respect for us, he doesn’t force himself on us, but neither does he give up on us when we mess up. Instead, at horrific cost to himself, he has done all it takes to put things right again, and yet he still restrains his yearning to interfere and waits for us to come to our senses and let him help us. Even though a skilled, highly ethical surgeon can heal, he refuses to invade a person’s body without that person’s permission. Similarly, Jesus refuses to abuse his power. Despite his stupendous yearning to rescue you, he holds himself back, waiting for your permission. There is One who suffered indescribable horrors on the cross for you and yet still restrains himself until you are willing. Even if no one else in the universe could be trusted, he can be trusted. This isn’t just about faith; it is simple logic. If you were hopelessly lost in a cave, and a rescuer located you and offered to lead you out, you wouldn’t question if you could trust him; you would be smart enough to know you have no alternative. You would follow him to safety. It is the same with Jesus. He knows the way out. There is no situation bigger than him. He has the ultimate authority. You might want to object, “Yes, but, look at what happened to me.” Are you dead? I think not. You were deeply hurt, but you are still alive. And Jesus has not only borne your pain and kept you alive, he knows the way to healing. He is asking you to come out of that dark cave of pain and into the light of healing. Will you tell him, “No, I’m determined to figure the way out of this cave myself even though I don’t have enough water to last”? No one in a real cave would be that stupid, so why would you do that to your soul? Trusting God isn’t as hard as hell makes it out to be. Of course the enemy of your soul does not want you to know that you are so tenderly loved by the most trustworthy person in the universe and that your cravings for safety can be filled. The safest place to be is trusting in God, the Divine, the Healer, the Champion of your faith and victory. When alters begin to heal it is hard for protector alters to release their iron grip of control and yet this is essential to facilitate the healing of the alters they care for. Although I was doing my best, I discovered that I was not only protecting the other alters, but I was also unknowingly oppressing them. My way of protecting was to lock the alters away where I believed it was safe. But as good as my intentions were, it wasn’t real safety. I was just keeping them in hiding, which ended up keeping them from flourishing. Protector alters have suffered such severe trauma that it has damaged their ability to know when risks are sufficiently low to be worth taking. Known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, remaining excessively vigilant can end up not only needlessly stressing oneself but hurting those we long to help. When the Nazis were murdering Jews, Irena Sendler heroically smuggled to safety, a few at a time, over two thousand children in a tool box or sack. In that crisis her actions were highly justified but had she become so paranoid that she kept the children hidden in a confined space for years after the war, it would have been needlessly detrimental to their well-being, no matter how good the intentions. This is the tragic mistake that highly traumatized protector alters unknowingly make. For example, Freedom was one of the alters I sought to protect. She lived in her spaceship and had dreams that she left dormant because I told her it was unsafe to act out those dreams. One such dream was gourmet cooking. I feared she would be crushed if someone did not like her attempts and I knew I did not have sufficient cooking ability to protect her if she got into any difficulties in preparing a dish. So I kept her suppressing her dreams. But now I am releasing her into God’s care and letting her have her dreams because I have discovered that, unlike me, God protects without holding alters back from reaching their full potential. God knows every danger and how to win without oppression. He knows what is safe and what risks are worth taking. When I let God have his way with Freedom she began creating beautiful dishes for my husband that the rest of us also enjoy. I love her and wanted so much to protect her from hurt but it turned out that while I was doing my utmost to do this, I was actually keeping her from being herself and robbing her of fulfillment. God really is better than I am at helping alters. God loves me deeply and I am still a vital part of the system of alters but now all the pressure is off me to try to act like God. I am free to relax and heal and see my sister alters heal. I love the way Freedom is now feeling safer and having fun. God looks after her and she is learning from him how to cook creatively. She is joining cooking groups online and having a ball exploring who she is. She is no longer hidden away on a spaceship, but truly living. I can rest now that God is control and I can heal; something protector alters cannot do when they are expending all their energy by being in charge. I am learning that one of the tragic consequences of trauma is that for years afterward one can be left with an exaggerated sense of danger. Severe trauma can be thought of as damaging one’s internal alarm system so that it cannot be reset. The alarm keeps blaring long after the original disturbance has ceased. As hard as it is, we need to stop believing our faulty alarm and start trusting God to keep us safe. I know from experience how scary it seems to trust anyone, but with his infinite love, patience and wisdom, God truly is trustworthy and, although challenging, the adjustment of letting God be God is more than worth it. Protector alters aren’t cowards! You have what it takes to courageously release your iron grip of control and truly heal. Protector alters aren’t oppressors, either. They truly want what is best for the others. I just want you fellow protector alters to realize that because God truly cares we don’t have to be on guard all the time and that by being on guard we are unintentionally holding back the ones we are trying to protect. Freedom, I am so sorry for restricting you in the past. I never wanted to ever hurt you. I thought you were too dumb to protect yourself and that I was doing you a favor. You have always been a good friend and let me have my way, but as I let God take over I have seen how I oppressed you because I was afraid you would get hurt otherwise. God is healing both of us and bring us into his glory, where both of us are safe and healing. A protector alter in another person shared with me about the huge toll of being a protector and how personally liberating it is to act differently. I have her permission to share her insights: I’ve discovered that most people who have started their journey into healing aren’t like who they were in the beginning. They are more alive. More real. I now see that the way I was when I was a protector was fake. It was as though I was hiding behind a worn-out mask. I used to believe I was a boy. I was always buff and strong. I was always on my toes, ready to fight at a moment’s notice. I never really thought about myself. I was forever thinking about my host and who was going to hurt us next. But now I can relax and enjoy my life. I have time for writing and for taking a walk. I don’t worry anymore. Now I am more real and alive. It’s like the story of the velveteen rabbit. All his life he just wanted to be real. And he became real when he loved something more than himself. In his case, the one he loved was a little boy. But in my case, I love Jesus more than me. Unlike the velveteen rabbit, I don’t have to burn myself to death to prove my love and become real. Jesus already did that for me. That made me start thinking about how much I loved my host, Lilly, back when her dad was abusing her. I wouldn’t have thought of it as love back then. I thought of it as protecting. But we only protect the things we love. I loved Lilly so much that I was willing to deliberately stand in the way of fists and baseball bats. It was hard, exhausting work keeping her safe all the time. But, for all of my work at loving and protecting Lilly, I could never be me. I always had that worn out mask to lug around. My love for Lilly made me less human. I have heard it said that love changes things. Rather, it is the one you love that changes things. Lilly was small and powerless when she was a kid. She needed someone to love her. That is what I did. I loved her by protecting her. But that only caused me to have to wear that weary old protector’s mask. Then she started to love Jesus more than herself and that made her more alive and she was better able to take care of herself. I didn’t have to wear the old mask anymore. Then it was my turn to choose who I would love most. At the time I did not realize how wisely I had chosen when I chose to love Jesus, because it isn’t love that changes things; it’s the one you love that changes things. So here’s the rule I’ve discovered: the more I love Jesus, the more I become who I was meant to be. There used to be a group in which people with D.I.D. could safely and anonymously e-mail each other. The protector alter who wrote most of the above belonged to the group but the following involves two other members. One protector alter e-mailed saying how everything seemed to be crashing around her. Another member’s protector alter replied: I am very encouraged that you are failing as a protector. That is excellent progress. While in trauma, your role was to be emotionless, to be hard, to be cold, to not feel, to override and control others. Your role was to not be human. Now, my friend, you are feeling your humanity and your pain. No longer is your “job” to protect. Your “job” is to get healthy. You are precious and important, my friend. I know you see your responsibility to your inner family as paramount but your needs are important. There comes a time when it is your turn to fall apart and be carried. You have done so much to aid the healing of the other alters; now it is your turn. If someone breaks a leg, there is a critical period when a crutch aids healing but the time arrives when continued use of the crutch hinders the final stages of healing. You have been that crutch that has contributed greatly to healing your alters and now you have reached that thrilling point when your role needs to change. There are still many responsibilities, but your sacrifices for your alters have brought them to the point where they can now help. And you need to let them do this, both for their sake and for yours. Trust your alters. It will release them into their final stage of healing and will do the same for you. I have a feeling that alters are fighting with you and the tug-o-war is getting you nowhere. Let go of the rope. Just let what is happening happen. You cannot disappear. Neither can you go insane. Your D.I.D. will ensure that your mind has the flexibility to adapt, and God is with you. You are on the brink of something you have always yearned for but never dared hope could be yours. Let go, my friend, and ride to fulfillment, resting in the safe arms of God. What is happening to you is exceptionally healthy. Your mind is birthing something new and wonderful. Be at peace. For more, see What Alters (Insiders) Wish their Hosts Knew

Turning Disorder into Order Yes, Dissociative Identity Disorder can be cured. The cure for Dissociative Identity Disorder (also known as Multiple Personality Disorder) is carefully explained in the website, beginning with Healing your “Inner Child” / Inner Pain: Help for Alters (Insiders) and Sufferers of Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.) or Multiple Personality Disorder (M.P.D.) . If you have not already read How to Speed Healing of Dissociative Identity Disorder , I urge you to do so before proceeding with this webpage. Readers might find the following interesting and useful but it is long, whereas How to Speed Healing of Dissociative Identity Disorder  not only provides a useful summary of the techniques explained below, it covers other important aspects of the cure for D.I.D. not mentioned here. The cure hinges on every part (alter) of the person learning how to relate harmoniously with each other. This webpage describes how anyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder can create an internal world that will facilitate the cure. To show you how, I have asked two of my friends who are healing from D.I.D. to explain precisely what they did to create, and subsequently modify, their inner world to maximize their healing. This is not some gimmick: both of them earnestly sought God’s direction and even though they did this quite independently, what they have ended up with is an astonishingly similar way of organizing their minds so as to minimize chaos and maximize order and thereby facilitate healing. By following their example, you can turn the disorder into order in Dissociative Identity Disorder . To preserve their privacy, I will not use their real names. I’ll start with “Lilly”, who writes: When I was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder I researched the dickens out of the subject. Here is my conclusion: living within me are separate entities who have all the characteristics of real people and should be treated as such. Each has his/her own dreams, desires, tastes, beliefs and abilities. And all of them have been traumatized. Alters are not imaginary. They really exit. Imagining they are unreal will not stop them from being real. Because they are real, however, they are capable of independent thought, and imagination is one of their many abilities that make them human. As a little girl, I used my prodigious imagination as a tool to keep these vital parts of me feeling as safe as I could manage. Back then, I used my imagination to unlock the treasure chest of my mind and store away the precious gems that are my alters. So if my imagination was the tool that got me into this, then it is also the tool that will empower me get my parts working together as an effective team and facilitate my healing. Note from Grantley:  Lilly was cautious about wording this because, even as she was writing it, her alters were apprehensive about her mentioning imagination. They worried that some readers might misunderstand and conclude that alters themselves are imaginary. Alters who spend most of their time inside have little contact with the real world, often have a very limited range of memories and some of them try to avoid inner pain by blocking human feelings and might even not think of themselves as human. It is not surprising that this renders them vulnerable to the fear that they might be the product of someone’s imagination, even though the very fact that this disturbs them proves how real they are. The dilemma is that mentioning imagination is likely to freak out alters living a shallow existence in an shadowy world, and yet the skilful use of imagination is the very thing that will help them develop and feel more real than ever before. The confused reaction of people’s alters to an early draft of this webpage confirmed Lilly’s alters’ concern. In fact, it stirred such unease that I’ve had to craft a small section below to put everyone’s mind at rest. Some alters will need to read it before proceeding. Others will later find themselves needing reassurance and will have to scroll back to this point. Of course, it would be easier for me to avoid the entire subject but it has far too critical a role in healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder for me to do so. Imagination: An Essential Therapeutic Tool? A Christian and Scientific Evaluation The ability to imagine is a God-given gift without which we humans would be appallingly handicapped. Imagination is so much a part of our divinely-created being that it impacts us on so many levels. If it were only essential for creativity, planning and motivation, imagination would be critically important for human endeavor. Our dependence upon this priceless gift, however, extends way beyond that. To be stripped of just one aspect of imagination – the ability to accurately imagine what it would be like to be in someone else’s circumstances – would render us so cold-hearted and so out of touch with the rest of humanity and devoid of empathy and divine compassion that we would be reduced to something akin to a sociopath. Obviously, withdrawing inward and imagining being in a safe, serene environment will significantly reduce stress and anxiety. On the other extreme, but with a similar end-result, for decades psychologist have been curing people’s fears by encouraging people to relax while they deliberately imagine being in situation they would normally find scary. Citing scientific research, Wikipedia states, “. . . mental imagery has been shown to play a key role in contributing to, exacerbating, or intensifying the experience and symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), compulsive cravings, eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa, spastic hemiplegia, incapacitation following a stroke or cerebrovascular accident, restricted cognitive function and motor control due to multiple sclerosis, social anxiety or phobia, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder [ADHD], and depression.” If certain mental images can have such a negative impact, replacing them with more positive mental images might be presumed to significantly help these people. The article, in fact, goes on to cite studies that confirm this. For anyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder, however, the therapeutic benefits of imagination can stretch far beyond this. All alters who remain inside and have little interaction with the real world live in an imaginary world. Tragically, until they receive help from an outside source or from alters experienced with the outside world, their imaginary world often keeps them needlessly traumatized. Because they are unaware of the passage of time, for example, many imagine the body they live in is still that of a small, weak, vulnerable child. In many alters’ imaginary world, their former abusers still have access to them when, in reality, these dangers are actually long gone. It is not unusual for some alters to think they are not even human and to imagine this so strongly that they are convinced they are animals or some such thing. For a few (and this applied to some of Lilly’s alters), their imaginary world is even a place where they are tortured by other alters. Like it or not, until inside alters have gained all the healing and maturity and knowledge needed to live exclusively in the external world of adults, they will live in what, to some extent at least, is an imaginary world, This being so, we should endeavor to make that world a safe, fun place that facilities healing. Not only is an oppressive inner world the enemy of healing, even a boring one hinders healing. Inside alters need a mentally stimulating and fulfilling environment that promotes emotional well-being and intellectual development. Fun – in tragically short supply in the life of a traumatized child – is very healing, and play is critically important in healthy child development. Adult responsibilities combine with lack of privacy, however, to severely limit opportunities in the outside world for little alters in an adult’s body to engage in the sort of play that children need. Playing in the privacy of one’s imagination overcomes this serious restriction. Moreover, imagination (make-believe) is a significant component in child’s play. Using the imagination comes naturally to many inside alters. It is hosts – alters who spend most of their time relating to the real world rather than an imaginary one – who are more likely to question using the imagination to make life easier for inside alters. Guided imagery is a term that makes me recoil because my mind leaps insanely to a term we should rightly recoil from: spirit guides. If it were only demons and not ourselves or the Spirit (given to guide us into all truth – John 16:13) who can guide our imagination, however, something would be disturbingly amiss. Imagination is safe or dangerous, depending on who does the guiding. Some Christians speak of using their sanctified imagination. The bottom line is that we can no more stop imagining than we can stop being human. To do nothing to guide our imagining is to leave it open to undesirable influences. Now let’s approach the matter of imagination from another angle: having alters means that one’s brain has become compartmentalized. It is a fully functional brain riddled with no-go areas, like a city where many streets have bogus No Entry signs on them, which drivers needlessly obey because no one even imagines they could be fake. This makes reconnecting parts of the brain a major goal of healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Imagination is a powerful way of giving oneself permission to access memories/parts of one’s brain that were previously considered off-limits. Using one’s imagination as a tool for the creation/strengthening of neural pathways (and so reconnecting the brain) is neither fanciful nor flaky but has a strong scientific basis. Lilly continues: I have used my imagination to create an internal world where no harm could come to any part of me. It enables me to personally interact with my parts and for them to find more peace and fulfilment. Before creating this internal world, I had no way of interacting with these parts of me, other than with their voices in my head. That seemed too vague and inefficient. I chose to model my inner world on a wonderful camp I attended as a teen. Other people might feel more comfortable with imagining something quite different for their parts to reside and interact – perhaps even the Starship Enterprise. I had just two parts when I started, and I enlisted their help. We used our imagination to made everything look cozy, inviting and fun. Here are the important things we included: A Place for Each Alter to Live The little ones have decided to live together and have decorated their own room. The adults and teens live wherever they want. Most of them live with other alters. I encourage them to employ their imagination to create whatever they want. I want them to feel at home with me, so I encourage self-expression. One has a garden. Another has, in my opinion, the coolest room. He added a watch tower to the top of his room so that he could look for new parts for me. The kids put in a water park and a playground. A Place for Food This is for socialization purposes. Also, we have a camp chef. She enjoys cooking in both worlds and it provides her with a meaningful role. A Group Meeting Area This is where we come together for our daily meetings. I’ll detail later what happens in these critical meetings. Places for Quiet Contemplation We have docks that look out onto a lake, a cliff face to sit on, and natural hot springs. These are places where everyone can be reached if necessary but it also helps establish the concept of respecting each other’s boundaries. I added these places because the camp can sometimes be chaotic. Some of my parts want space but they still want to be able to share cabins with their fellow parts. Hiding Places These are domes floating on the lake. They are there for times when an alter wants to run away. Alters can go there whenever they feel the need to be completely alone but the domes allow everyone to know where these alters are and that they are safe. They know this because whenever a dome’s door is closed a sign appears displaying the occupant’s name. Each dome contains a special chest that allows alters to access what they have at their house. The little ones asked for this. A room with nothing to do doesn’t appeal to them. A message to the occupant might be required when he or she has a skill or critically important information that is urgently needed, or to inform the occupant that circumstances that had upset the alter have improved, or simply to check as to whether anything can be done to comfort the alter. For such messages we have a high tech way of writing on the dome’s door so that the person inside can read it. Depending on the occupant’s mood and the nature of the message, he or she might choose not to respond, use the same method to reply in writing, or unlock the door and speak face to face with the visitor. Unknown Area This contains living quarters for parts of me that I don’t yet know about. Sometimes they prefer just to watch what is going on at camp before making themselves known. I want them to do this in comfort. I never enter this area because I don’t want them to feel any pressure to reveal themselves until they are ready. The Chapel This the most important part of the camp. It contains the throne room of Christ. I would like all new alters to visit there first. Unless I send someone to the chapel, Jesus is always out with my alters and me. He loves his throne room but he loves time with us even more. Without his involvement in the camp there is no way I could survive all this. A Computer System For so many reasons, this has proved invaluable. Before this, for example, when learning to drive, each of us learned a little of what was required to drive safely. Not surprisingly, the result was highly dangerous. Now that we have stored in the computer all of our little bits of information, however, anyone with access to our computer can drive. Even the littles. And for all of us it is so much safer! No one can be expected to make smart decisions if he only knows a fraction of the facts. The more information in our computer, the smarter and safer we will be. And how can anyone feel connected to reality if one has little awareness of one’s past or the outside world? The computer system also allows alters fast access to information. Those in the know do not have to laboriously repeat it all to them. As long as one of us has learned it, they can learn new skills almost instantly. We not only store memories in our computer, we are beginning to treasure memories. I tell my alters, “Hold good memories tightly for they bring life. Hold the bad ones gently for they bring strength.” Our abusers wanted to make us putty in their hands by keeping us quaking in fear and hopelessness. So they wanted to keep us from remembering and talking about good experiences. Facing bad memories – memories of abuse – empowers us to heal and remembering them empowers us to minister to other hurting people and reminds us that we are victors. Despite all that was thrown at us, we have overcome through Jesus and this reminder fills us with confidence for the future. Everyone but me has a password-protected personal profile where they can store all of their personal information. All of my thoughts, memories and so on are on a camp-wide profile. It is not password-protected and any part can access it. Alters can also download to the camp-wide profile as much of their personal files as they wish. This way they can share memories, good and bad, when they feel comfortable about doing so. They started by sharing the good memories they have with Jesus. This has been incredibly helpful for new ones because then it makes it easier for them to trust Jesus. These memories are a part of the camp introduction video for all newcomers. I’ve learned that I can direct my thoughts outwards to talk to parts, or I can direct them inwards to talk to myself. If I talk to myself, no one can hear me immediately. It does, however, get recorded and stored on the camp computer and then anyone can access my personal thoughts. The time lag, however, between me having private thoughts and them being downloaded and hence becoming common knowledge can be very useful! A Message Board The Message Board is an example of us continually experimenting with improving the efficiency and effectiveness of how we relate to each other and to the outside world. We still call it our giant chalkboard because it was originally modelled on one but since those early days my part Annalise has brilliantly added refinement after refinement to it. We owe the cool technical features of the Hiding Places to her genius as well. The Message Board started off as a means whereby parts could express themselves anonymously. One of my parts was too shy to talk. I found her only because she wrote on it. Uplifting messages can also be placed there. Then Annalise thought of connecting it to our alters’ minds so that even those who cannot write can add a message to it. Later, Annalise come up with the idea of attaching it to my short term memory, both to improve my memory and to lessen the stress and distraction caused by me continually reminding myself not to forget something important. Another added function is that it allows my alters to inform me of things, without interrupting me at inappropriate times. The message board does this by monitoring the busyness of my mind and waiting for the appropriate level before sending the message. It’s a little like phone messages that I can access when I have time but this system knows when it’s the best time for me to be informed and that’s when it automatically alerts me. Things to Do as a Group Even though I’m not actively using my imagination all the time, my parts are using the facilities I provide. Being bored isn’t good! At one stage I had two very powerful people in my system who hated each other. It was rough on everyone. So I had two camps for a while. I tried to spend equal time with each of them and helped the leaders of both camps set up a way of doing things that suited them. It took a lot of time and energy and peacemaking but now we’re back to one camp. One of the alters that originally helped Lilly set up the camp adds: At first, things were boring where we lived. There wasn’t anything to do and it was dark. All I could do was see whatever Lilly (I call her Mom) was looking at. But when Mom found me and another part, she loved us and now we live in a beautiful camp. She imagined it up for us. We have a lake to swim in and toys to play with. We even have a cabin to live in. It’s real pretty. But going swimming everyday can get kinda boring! So I asked Mom if we could make a playground and she let us. There used to be a part who would hurt us littles but Mom and Jesus put up a shield to protect us. They even put it around the playground. But even a playground can get boring. So I asked Mom for a water park. She let us design it. It’s awesome. The best part is that we can change it anytime we want. Mom lets us make anything we want in here. P.S. We’ve just decided to put a carnival on the roof of the complex in the middle of the camp. We have a lot of teenagers now and they want something not “kiddie”. What if Visualization Seems Impossible? You don’t have to start with anything as complex as Lilly’s inner world ended up. As will become even clearer later, even Lilly kept refining her inner world and you, too, can start off simple and modify it as the need arises. Upon hearing about the value of developing an inner world, however, a woman raised a more perplexing issue. She wrote: My problem with this suggestion is that I can’t seem to visualize. A long time ago, if I looked through a clothes catalogue, within a short time I could see new creations, one after another and I knew I had the ability to design clothes. But after a few seconds these mental images would disappear and I could not retrieve them. I may be able to hold a fantasy or construed image in my mind for a millisecond, but then it vanishes. It is the same with my poems: if I start writing immediately, I can write them, but if I don’t, they are mostly gone forever. When I was twelve I could draw really nice pictures (by merely looking at pictures) but I lost that ability by the time I was thirteen, and ever since I can’t even draw stick figures well. I replied: You haven’t lost the ability to draw; you have merely lost access to this alter. The more you show love and kindness to the alters you currently know, the more other alters will see it and be inspired to reveal themselves to you. Lost abilities, including your ability to remember, reside in your alters – some of whom you haven’t met yet, and some have not yet developed their abilities. For example, Christine [whose story appears later] used to be greatly hindered by having a problem with sequential memory. Eventually a three year old alter appeared and in time this alter began what she called “stealing memories” from other alters. She began organizing the memories into what she visualized as a filing cabinet (unlike Lilly, she did not like computers). Eventually she used this to become a whiz at accessing all the memories. Christine is now working in a job she couldn’t have done had it not been for this alter developing that “filing cabinet”. Lilly, who also knows this woman, added something very significant: Your parts seem to communicate by writing things down. Perhaps you could describe in your journal a safe internal world. You might start by putting in writing a brief outline and ask others to add details. If, for example, you decide upon a big tree house, you could later say something like, “I’m climbing the ladder to the tree house, punching in the security code and climbing through the hatch. Now, I’m sitting with you on the big, soft pillows and asking you . . .” That way, no one has to remember anything and nothing has to be visualized but it still allows them live in a world they can control. Every day, read aloud what alters have already written and then write more. Be open to the possibility that they may add something unexpected. If they do, just go with it. You might eventually find yourself visualizing it (which would be faster) but writing might be a way to get started. Interacting with the External World More from Lilly: I see relating to the outside world as like being in a car. Whoever is in what I call the driver’s seat controls the body. There is also a back seat. Any alter in neither seat is unaware of what is happening in the outside world, whereas those in the back seat can observe both the outside world and what the one in the driver’s seat is doing. They can advise the driver but they cannot interact with the outside world until they move to the front seat. I am the default driver, but the backseat is infinitely large so anyone can sit there and see what is happening. Alters come and go as they like in the back seat. Both seats are installed with a computer with all the information that is necessary for life (plans for the day, recent conversations and other important information). It is stored unemotively as facts. Anyone entering is immediately downloaded with this information (as in Star Trek). They don’t have a choice. This is for our safety in case an uninvited, inadequately prepared alter tried to take over. My five protector parts are usually in the backseat. They feel the need to protect me by taking over in certain situations. However, they have started taking shifts so that they can do other things. I am glad they are gaining sufficient confidence in my abilities to do this. If ever I try to interact with the outside world and nothing happens, I know I’ve been relegated to the backseat. From there I can talk to the one in the front seat and to those at camp but that is the extent of my power. I hate it when parts sneak up to the driver’s seat. It’s nerve racking to watch my body do things I don’t want it to do. At first I did not realize what was happening, but now I know when they do this because I am suddenly and uncontrollably dissociated. I am conscious of what is going on but I see everything from an observer’s perspective or it’s all de-realized or everything looks new. The precise effect it has on me depends on which part is out. When alters end their stint in the front seat I remember what happened but only as a vague impression – no emotion or detail. When, however, instead of an alter forcing herself/himself into the front seat, I actually invite an alter to the front seat, I make myself go into an observer mode by imagining myself as a mere observer. Then the alter takes over. When this type of changeover occurs I better remember what happens. Those parts of me who aren’t in either of the seats are free to do whatever they wish at camp. Unless parts are paying attention, they do not know what is happening in any area except the one they are in. We’ve been practicing having two of us in the front seat. This, for example, enables one of us to be talking on the phone while another is looking through Facebook. It’s still kind of clunky but it’s getting better. On the other extreme, I’m hoping to learn how to block out every mental distraction so I can give whatever I want to study such intense focus that it is beyond what most people are capable of. Another skill I’m hoping to develop is putting myself so deeply and exclusively into my internal world that an alter of my choosing could move into the front seat and converse with someone in the outside world without me having any idea of what is said. You might think it strange that I would ever want to do this but I’ve found to my frustration that some of my parts refuse to reveal their secrets to me before telling my therapist or my friend, Grantley (who is co-authoring this webpage). Grantley explained that this is because they regard him as more expendable than me. If he were to reject one of my parts (which he would never do), that part would be less devastated than if it were me who rejected the alter. So they prefer to test Grantley’s reaction before taking the ultimate risk of letting me know their secrets. Even if they feel secure in my love and ongoing approval, they have devoted their entire existence to keeping secrets from me to protect me from distress and they look to Grantley for reassurance that I could cope with knowing their secrets. Anyhow, that’s why them knowing I could not eavesdrop could speed my healing. A related skill I’m working on is to learn how to block pain when needed. I’m inspired by Jamie, one of my parts who is very good at this. When I let her have the body almost every pain goes away. I think a little pain remains because I am co-conscious. What if I learned to totally remove myself from the front or back seat? I would have to be careful about this because pain can be a God-given warning that I should ease up or that something needs attention (such as alerting me that I have a hand on a hot stove). Used wisely, however, blocking pain could be useful. I’ve shared these examples in the hope of inspiring you to dream up your own ways of using Dissociative Identity Disorder to expand your mental powers beyond what average people are capable of. As Grantley says, “Why not transform a dis ability into a super-ability? Trauma you could not control pushed your mind to extremes. Why not turn this into an asset? When circumstances were out of control it was heroic merely to survive but now you can take control and thrive.” Just days after writing all of the above, Lilly was stunned by a surprise attack that dramatically proved that the skills she had been experimenting with went way beyond some cute exercise in intellectual development. A powerful, highly dangerous alter who called himself World Changer suddenly burst into the camp, along with nearly as many alters as Lilly had already discovered. As is typical of hostile alters, World Changer mistakenly thought he was doing what was necessary to help and he is now filled with remorse over his actions but until he was reigned in sufficiently to listen to reason he posed a serious threat. We later learned that he was formed when Lilly was a very little girl who had had so many bad things happen to her whenever she got out of bed that she concluded that she must never again get out of bed. World Changer accepted this as truth and took upon himself the duty of keeping her there no matter what. Alters kept wanting to get up, so he felt obligated to keep them in crates and to keep torturing them to keep them in submission. When the number of alters got too many for him to keep this up, he appointed other alters to torture them. I don’t know the exactly how much damage would have been inflicted had Lilly been taken over by a highly confused little child who was convinced he must at any cost keep Lilly permanently in bed. I know that had he spoken with me or Lilly’s therapist we could have helped him but would he have ever contacted us? Anyhow, World Changer was determined to seize control and physically harm Lilly and not only oppress all the alters he had not previously restrained but to cruelly punish them. It was only because of the structure, safeguards and skills that Lilly had so recently developed that this devastating takeover attempt was nipped in the bud. The fascinating details are provided later in this webpage. Immediately after the victory, however, an entirely different inner world had to be added to the existing one to accommodate the different needs and phobias of the previously unknown traumatized alters who had arrived with World Changer. Having been kept in crates by him, these young alters were afraid of any kind of enclosure – even clear ones. So Lilly and her established team of alters immediately set about creating for them a town on the clouds called Agape Village. All the new alters have their own cloud with a voice activated draw bridge for whenever they feel the need to be alone. Underneath every home cloud is a bowl shaped cloud to catch them should they fall off the edge, and a voice activated levitation device to return them to their home cloud. This is set up not to help them feel secure but for fun. They can jump off and land and float up to do it again as much as they like. Every cloud is tethered to the ground so that no one can accidentally float away. On one cloud is open-air chapel and a playground and a levitation device to get people to and from the camp. To help the new ones adjust quicker, all of the littles in the camp who are strong enough healthy and some of the adult alters volunteered to live with the new arrivals, The experience gained by creating and modifying the original camp empowered Lilly and the team she had trained to achieve this with remarkable ease and speed. Lilly continues: My parts are the result of a traumatized child’s mind. So whenever I think of my parts I think of the traumatized children I have worked with. One of these children would get triggered and try to run away. Since it wasn’t always safe for him to do that, I would catch him and hold onto him. I was keeping him safe but while I was holding him he would keep kicking me and biting me. I know he wasn’t genuinely angry with me because when he had finished fighting me he would sob on my shoulder and repeatedly say “I’m sorry”. I didn’t discipline him for what seemed to be angry behavior because he wasn’t being rebellious. He was simply afraid and when he received the help he needed to alleviate his fear the behavior ceased. The same is true of my parts. I expect from my parts crying and cussing, insults and clinginess. I expect them to treat me like dirt and to tell my therapist what evil scum she is. I expect them to shun Jesus and even flat out reject him. This is what traumatized people do – children or otherwise. I held onto that little boy regardless of the abuse he lashed out on me because I loved him and wanted him to find healing. The same is true of my therapist and me. I let my parts say, and sometimes do, horrible. things because I love them and want them to find healing. The emotional climate in my class of traumatized children is critical. Here’s what I do at camp to mirror my classroom: I remove all pressure to behave. I never require anyone to do anything he or she doesn’t want to do. This includes spending time with Jesus, even though I ache for them to do this. I encourage community. In a community, everyone has a part to play. Every day in our meeting we make a list of the things we need to get done. And everyone chooses which, if any, they want to do. I relinquish control of this and let them choose. I make myself a safe caregiver. I try to love them regardless of their behaviors. I give them what they need and, whenever practical, what they want. I listen to them and try to respect all the boundaries they set – even boundaries that make me nervous. I spend time with them and play with the littles. I am committed to seeking their best, regardless of the hurdles I have to jump. I strive to focus myself, and their healing, on Jesus. Without him I know I’d be sunk. I encourage communication. We have a roll call every morning meeting. We each talk about any problems we have and see what we can do to resolve things. I try to be honest with my feelings because trauma isn’t easy and they need me to be an example of how to deal with hard things. I encourage interaction in the outside world. One day they may have to be in the driver’s seat. So they need to feel safe and know what to do. If a part is reticent to try it out, I invite him or her into the back seat to watch. Then, when the part is comfortable, I do my best to guess what the alter would like and I ask the alter what he or she thinks I should do. Then I do as the alter has instructed me. Soon enough, the part has the confidence to do things in the outside world. Then, when the alter is ready, I encourage him or her to talk to a safe person in the outside world. As explained, communicating with someone you can’t see can be hard for obvious reasons and I’ve found a way of overcoming this handicap. I wasn’t an adult when my earliest parts were created. So it makes sense to me that in order to best connect with my parts I should go back to using imagination as children do. There are three rules children follow when playing pretend: 1. Never say it isn’t real You can’t imagine something to be true at the same time as believing it is false. It might seem like you can but what really happens is you believe it is true for a moment and then you believe it isn’t true for another moment. Kids just believe what they imagine to be true for a long time. They never say it isn’t real. Camp is real because I make it real with my imagination, just as kids do. When I stop believing camp is real, the people still exist; I’m just not communicating with them. 2. Expect the other person to play along If two little girls are playing with dolls and one little girl makes a doll say, “Hello,” she assumes that the other little girl will respond. If that little girl doesn’t respond it’s considered bad form. Likewise, I expect the parts I am dealing with at camp to respond. I do this by relaxing my brain and pausing to listen for a response. Then I assume what comes into my brain next is that part’s voice. Sometimes one of my parts doesn’t respond, but that’s okay. These people are hurting. They will respond when they are ready. 3. Accept the fact that the person you are playing with may respond in an unexpected way This is the rule that causes most fights when kids are playing pretend. If one little girl says, “Hello” with a doll and the other little girl responds with, “I’m angry,” the first girl has a choice. She can say, “Why are you angry?” or she can say to her friend, “No, you’re supposed to say, ‘Hi!’” It’s the same at camp. My parts can respond in some pretty unexpected ways. This is actually a good thing. It means I heard correctly! I get nervous when things sound like something I would say because I don’t want to be the little girl who makes her friend say only what she wants to hear. Over time, I have gotten better at distinguishing between their voice and mine. For some of my parts, the difference between their voice and mine is subtle. I think the only way to grow in this area is through experience and asking for clarification. I ask for clarification because that adds more words for me to hear and therefore more exposure. It’s okay to mishear them. What matters most is that I am trying and not giving up. This is more than my parts have ever received before. Life with D.I.D. can be overwhelming at times. When I feel overwhelmed I just remember what my therapist said, “You live with twenty trauma clients,” (my current number of alters). Then I do what she does – I take a day off! I spend a day in which all of us focus on doing fun things and try to leave squabbles and unpleasant memories for another day. Although I was initially amazed to learn of the similarity between Lilly’s and Christine’s inner worlds it should really have come as no surprise and I believe other people with Dissociative Identity Disorder have also developed similar systems. I think another reason for the similarity is that both of them have been led of God on their healing journey. Originally, Christine’s equivalent of Lilly’s camp was a spaceship. The story of how this came about and why it was later changed is not only touching and informative but shows how what Lilly describes is not artificial. It can develop quite naturally as one pushes forward on the healing journey. Deliberately creating and modifying one’s inner world, however, can significantly speed the journey. One of Christine’s alters used to be nameless but after talking to me she chose the name Freedom because she longed to be free of all earthly restrictions. She is still around but these days most of the time she is integrated with Christine’s host and many other alters. Freedom has much to offer those she integrated with because she had learned not to be thrown by people and circumstances. So this merger brought a significant increase in stability to the host. But let’s zip back in time to the beginning of her story. The young alter who decades later became known as Freedom noticed that neighbors and her own parents treated their dogs with greater kindness than she received. Concluding that being human makes one vulnerable to cruel treatment and to awful feelings, she wished she were a dog and began pretending she was one. She would eat out of a dog bowl, bark, and so on. I presume observers thought she was just playing but it was driven by a deep wish that would probably have eventuated in her becoming convinced she really was a dog. She knew God, however, and he convinced her that this was not a good path to take. She remained adamant that being human exposed her to too much pain. So she decided to compromise by seeing herself as an alien from another planet who only occasionally visited earth. When not on this planet, she was off in her spaceship flying to God and to other worlds, such as Ice Cream Planet, where everything was made of delicious ice cream. Almost thirty years later, Christine began dating a kind man who not only loved her, but loved her alters who, for the first time ever, were beginning to reveal themselves to Christine and to him. One day, Freedom happened to be visiting earth and heard this man talking with Christine. Eventually she made herself known to him and began to like him a lot. That was fine for several months until one day Freedom discovered to her horror that she was in love with this man. That was impossible! She was an alien! Aliens don’t fall in love with humans! Nevertheless, she found herself forced to conclude that she really was human and subject to human emotions and therefore vulnerable to being hurt. She felt devastated. Freedom soon discovered, however, that being human was not so bad after all – especially when there’s a wonderful man to love. More little alters began to emerge and they desperately needed comforting and mothering. Seeing the need, Freedom began helping. They needed somewhere safe to stay, so she took them into the spaceship. She wasn’t too keen about sharing her spaceship with them but they had to be cared for somewhere. Freedom loved designing things and created beautiful rooms for them. God told her to arrange for them to sleep two per room, so that each pair got to know each other well, and then to regularly swap roommates. That way they eventually all got to know each other deeply. And they would all come together to play and Freedom would fly needy ones to God, as required, and take them all to Ice Cream planet and all the other worlds she loved. Freedom has a beautiful relationship with God. She had learned so much from him and she taught all the alters what she had learned. Then one day God asked Freedom to give up her spaceship for him. Whew! That was asking a lot! Freedom had been spending more and more time on earth but without a spaceship she would be permanently stuck on earth. She could never again flit off whenever things got challenging. But God was her God, so she obeyed. That meant everyone had to find a new place to live. They used their imagination to build it and called it Clown Town. I’ve asked the self-appointed Mayor of Clown Town to share with you: Hi! My name is Seven. I chose that name because that’s the age at which I was formed. I’m cheeky. I make the others laugh. It helps them relax and not take life so seriously. I often stand on my head, but only on the inside. Christine won’t let me use the body to do it. She says the body is too old for such things. But I can do all sorts of fun things on the inside. We have used our powerful imaginations to create a place inside where only alters, our host and God can go. It is a beautiful, safe, fun place to be. You, too, can use your powerful imagination to create a beautiful realm within. It’s yours, so let it have unique features that make it perfect for you. It might be an exquisite crystal palace, or a beach, or whatever most helps you and your parts feel safe and relaxed and happy. In our case, as well as gardens, lagoons and so on, we have many rooms, including one for each alter, although alters can bunk together if they wish. It also has what we call the White Room [the equivalent of Lilly’s Hiding Places]. This is reserved for anyone who has become freaked by something on the outside and needs time alone to recover from an upsetting experience. Its design suits us perfectly but it might seem too clinical for you. Modify it however you wish to create whatever place most helps you feel secure and relaxed and fosters recovery. For us, it has a white interior and is totally empty except for a bed. That way, even an alter who is feeling paranoid can be certain there is nothing scary hiding behind something. If the distressed alter wishes, she can lock the door from the inside to help her feel really safe and know that no one but God can enter. We can tell at a glance when the room is occupied and a sign indicates the name of the alter inside. That way we always know where each alter is. If needed, we can slip a note under the door, but as much as we can we let the alter recover without interruptions. In our main area is a huge filing cabinet [the equivalent of Lilly’s Computer] containing all the memories each alter has chosen to share. The memories were filed away by a particular alter who is very good at organizing information, but all of us volunteer for the memories to be collected and if any alter were to object we would respect her wishes. Nevertheless, we have discovered how highly beneficial it is to let our memories be accessible to our fellow alters. For you, the filing cabinet might be replaced by a video library with arm chairs and background music. Design it however best suits you but I highly recommend the concept. Whenever we discover a new alter, she is placed in a beautiful safe room. The new alter is tended to by what we call a feeler alter. Some alters take quite a while to learn how to feel. They originally dealt only with facts and left the feeling to feeler alters. Feeler alters, however, were originally formed to store memories of feelings rather than memories of facts. Remembering either without the other are complementary forms of dissociation. For the alter remembering little but facts, it feels almost as if the traumatic event happened to someone else or was no big deal. For the feeler alter, not knowing the associated facts still makes it seem unreal and this part of the person does not have to cope with knowing that her abuse was inflected by someone she longs to love and trust, nor deal with the horror of knowing that the abuse could be repeated at almost any moment. Feeler alters are very sensitive and kind but it’s best for them to work on the inside until they get very strong because they are so sensitive that they tend to overreact to things in the outside world and get hurt easily. Feeler alters make awesome friends and can really help new alters. They make great support alters, too. New alters are educated about all of us. They are informed, for example, that they are married, have a child, hold down a job, know Jesus, like plants and animals, that I’m right about everything – oops that isn’t supposed to be there. Oh well. They don’t call me cheeky for nothing. The feeler alter who is paired up with the new alter up explains that it is not safe to enter the outside world without a protector alter. As the new alter heals, she can go to the filing cabinet and access the memories of the other alters at whatever pace she feels comfortable with. Alters can access it alone but usually they prefer the feeler they have been paired with to be with them, offering support, comfort and guidance during this challenging time. Both the happy memories and the unhappy ones are stored because both promote healing. By consulting the files, new alters also learn about the other alters. If they wish, they can ask for a meeting with any of alters they are learning about and ask them specific questions. The filing cabinet of memories is, of course, how I learned all about what happened before I was born and all the many things that happened afterward when I wasn’t around. If, for example, I take a snooze while the others have fun on the outside going on a hike in the wilderness, I can catch up on all the memories when I wake up and the memories then end up being as vivid for me as they are for any part who was actively involved in the hike. We also have a huge message wall [equivalent to Lilly’s Message Bank] on which we can scribble notes to each other. Freedom (an alter who is good at organizing things) often puts our to-do lists there. She hands everyone a to-do list. Outsiders, insiders, God – no one escapes! Yes, God gets his own to-do list from her. It’s a little joke they share because he loves her, like he does the rest of us, but he takes seriously the things she wants. Sometimes we post funny things on the message wall. I posted the outcome of my election to Mayor of Clown Town. Amazingly, I won unanimously (it was entirely democratic but I simplified the process by only allowing myself to vote). Sometimes alters post notes of appreciation to other alters. We also post reminder notes so that we don’t forget something and so other alters can know where one alter put the keys or whatever. The message wall is also where new alters can post meeting requests to other alters. It is explained to them that if they request a meeting with a protector alter it could be a little while because protector alters are on the front line and need to stay there to keep the system safe and flowing. Feeler alters help the new alters learn that they are not alone and that fear always lies. Fear is not truth. Feelings are not truth either. It is okay to feel and okay to fear, but not to act on it or to trust it. Let me share something I learned about fear. One day I was eavesdropping on God telling Christine that love endures all things and overcomes. Being the sassy one who dives in where angels fear to paddle, I immediately challenged that. “Love wins?” I exclaimed, “Love endures all things!?!? Are ya nuts? If hell’s minions want ya, they’re gonna get ya.” At the time I thought abusers hold all the power and that victims are just that: victims. I cringe now, because I know how silly that sounds, but back then it really seemed true. (Rule Number One: You are free to think the smartest Person in the universe has the brains of a rubber monkey, but when you do, be prepared to end up looking somewhat less than a genius.) The Lord is too smart, kind and patient to be thrown by my outbursts. He just smiled at me and said, “Love heals itself. Love has no regrets and therefore no torment. Guilt and regret create a lot of torment.” “I sure know that torment,” I mumbled to myself. “Perfect love casts out fear,” God added. Okay, but I was an alter who stayed on the inside. I didn’t relate to the outside word, so what opportunity did I have to love? All of us who share Christine’s body see ourselves as an army. Some are front liners, Some are medics who treat the wounded. Some get supplies and messages to the front line. We know we are all part of the one person and each of us has a role. So there is no wondering, “What good is this alter?” Instead we ask each one, “Where is your place in our army?” Places and jobs can change from time to time but every alter belongs with us and has a vital role to play. Inside I was learning. (Jesus has encouraged us to think of ourselves as learners. Learning empowers us.) So I studied about war (since we always seem to be battling one thing or another), and about our host and other alters. Now returning to what God said about love. I had been a happy inside alter. I got to play in our gorgeous garden inside. We have unicorns. We have Ice Cream planet. We have lagoons and friendly mermaids. We have butterflies we can ride on. Life inside is pretty cool. But one day I noticed that Christine was outside getting attacked by someone saying hurtful things and, because of her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), it was making her shake and get sick. I like Christine. So I stopped playing and ran outside to help her, yelling to the outside person, “Leave her alone!” Christine told me to stay back because the attack was really intense. I refused. I knew I didn’t have PTSD like Christine did and it seemed unfair to expect her to stand alone for all of us. I told her I loved her and wanted to stand with her. Some of the harsh words hurled at her were now aimed at me, but they didn’t hurt me like they hurt Christine. I felt the attack, but it didn’t stop me. I was a bit confused but I continued to stand for Christine. I could hear Christine saying thanks. After each battle, we alters get together to discuss what happened. We unload our feelings and encourage each other and see what we can learn from the experience. We need all the help we can get, so we are not so dumb as to exclude the smartest Person in the universe from our meetings. Jesus is always welcome to listen and/or contribute. So after the incident I asked Christine why it hadn’t hurt me like it had hurt Christine. Jesus chimed in, explaining that I have strengths that Christine didn’t have and that this is true for each alter, as we are all part of the same person. Not one of us is complete without the others. We are complete only when all of us, together with God, contribute. I had jumped in out of love for Christine. That didn’t mean I was safe. It didn’t mean I wasn’t going to be attacked by those being nasty to her, but acting in love rather than being bullied by fear meant that I would heal and that we would overcome. Love is indeed a very important aspect of healing. As new alters get stronger and learn they begin to see the power of love and that fear is not truth. Abusers are dominated by fear; they feel fear and they use fear; they tell lies to hide their own fears and create false fears in their victims. New alters can heal inside and they are not exposed to stress on the outside until that one day when, driven by love, they choose to enter a battle, just as I did. Even before then, however, they learn to love each other and, motivated by love, they let alters share their painful memories so that they no longer have to bear them alone but have our loving support and understanding, and sometimes we have useful insights that lessen the pain. Upside down and giggling, Seven Comment by Grantley: Love casts out fear, says 1 John 4:18. Technically, this refers to no longer being afraid of God because of our love relationship with him. Even when taken out of context, however, there is truth in these words. Demons are cast out not be running from them but by standing up to them, no matter how scary they might seem. So it is with fear itself. Every time we stand up to something we fear, we take a step forward and fear takes a reluctant step backwards. It can still scream at us and try to bully us but every time we stand up to fear, it is as if we grow that little bit bigger and fear shrinks a little smaller. And what motivated this sassy alter to face something scary? Her love for Christine. Whether it be love for God, love for fellow alters or love for outside people, love is the great motivator that refuses to cower to fear. Alter Meetings You’ll recall Lilly saying she has a special area in her camp set aside for daily group meetings. I’ve asked her to share what happens in these meetings. She writes: Every morning I go on a walk in the outside world. While doing so, I visit the Group Meeting Area and ring the bell for roll call. Jesus takes the lead for most of the meeting. Here’s the format we use for the meeting: 1. Roll call We are family and every part is important. No one must be forgotten. Also, for us to stay safe and stable we need to know if anyone is missing. Recently, for example, one part went to a Hiding Place to be with Jesus for a few days. He was sorely missed because he plays a vital role in our spiritual morale. So I have a roll call and ask anyone not on the roll to indicate their presence. I might immediately help a newcomer feel comfortable and welcome but I leave it until after the meeting to follow up on any absentees and give additional support for newcomers. 2. Encouragement time. Jesus says something encouraging to each part, including me. It’s nice to watch my parts glow as they receive his loving words. Then he gives us each a chance to say something nice to him and/or someone else. It is wonderful to hear his voice speaking to me and to take time to encourage each part as well. It is vital for staying connected with Jesus in a comforting and personal way. It also helps build morale and encourages teamwork, both of which are important when decisions are being made. Obviously if you are grateful for someone, you are more willing to work with them. 3. Feelings and problems Then Jesus opens the floor for any of us to discuss feelings and problems. We talk them through one at a time. Sometimes Jesus has to moderate the discussion, especially if it applies to more than one person. Hard feelings need to be discussed because, no matter what they are, undiscussed feelings tear apart families. These discussions aren’t always easy. Sometimes people have to walk away. This happens a lot with new, angry parts. Jesus is much more patient than me and he has a way of keeping things calm. Recently, during one of these meetings, someone said some less than complimentary things about girls. One of the girls was particularly triggered by this and Jesus had to talk her into walking away because she was so angry. In the end, however, these feelings were talked about and resolved, with the result that we have two parts who were fully heard and one of them received healing. It’s hard work but the healing of even one part makes it worthwhile. 4. Planning the day Annalise or Lacey do this part. Annalise is highly organized. She writes the list on the giant message board. All alters have the opportunity to do something if they want but no one is ever compelled to do anything. If no one wants to do a particular job then Annalise, Lacey or I do it. I admit there are things I hate doing. Cleaning my room is an example. It baffles me why, but Annalise actually likes that sort of thing! One of the upsides to having DID is finding people to do the things you hate. Moreover, parts can have body time by doing this. It helps them feel more human when they have the opportunity to contribute in this way. Listing on the message board who has volunteered for each task helps hold me accountable and helps others remember their job. 5. A word from God Then I open the Bible. We either read a verse or two from a few different sources or continue memorizing whatever Scriptures we have been memorizing. During that time Jesus usually has a private message for each of us. It’s a special and prized moment in the day. Sometimes, we get instructions on what to look for during the day or a group challenge to overcome. But, most of the time, it is sweet communion with our Great Lover. 6. Reaffirmation of our motto Finally, we sing together the song Fix My Eyes  (by For King and Country  © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.) It is from this song that our camp motto is derived. Here is the motto: Love like you’re not scared.  Give when it’s not fair Live life for another Take time for a brother Fight for the weak ones Speak up for freedom Find faith in the battle Stand tall and above it all Fix your eyes on Jesus. This is an important reaffirmation of who we strive to be. It’s a call to action and a reminder of who we are and who Jesus is to us as a group. It is repeated daily so that it is in the forefront of our mind and gives us a common goal to help one another. Recently, one of our parts did something that affected all of the others adversely. It was an action born out of fear and a desire for safety but this part felt horrible for what she did. She was afraid to talk to Jesus about it. She and I talked about how we “stand tall and above it all” because we are Jesus’ kids. We are loved beyond reason. And, contrary to past experiences, we can “love like I’m not scared” by running to Jesus when we’ve done something wrong. No one is unwelcome in Jesus’ family. This reminder was very healing for her and me. Plainly, these meeting can take a long while. The saving grace, however, is having Jesus chair the meeting. He has much more time than me. On days when I can’t do the meeting Annalise keeps me informed of the meeting as we go through the day. I try to always stay around long enough to say something nice to everyone and look for new parts. Sometimes Annalise requests my presence and we break the meeting up into bite sized chunks throughout the day. I rely on Annalise a lot for this part of the day. Sometimes parts don’t want to attend the meeting or they do so with a horrible attitude or they are deeply hurt and just sit there. One of Lacey’s first appearances was during a meeting and she actually tried to attack me. We had to take her outside and Jesus calmed her down. She eventually started attending meetings regularly but she would sit at the back of the room and glower at us. We laugh to think back on that because she is a very different person now. In fact, she helps lead the meetings and is a vital component of the camp. Sometimes it takes a while for a part to be comfortable but they always come around with patience. This daily meeting is vital to the stability of our system. Without it things can get pretty rocky. I promised to include the story of how events unfolded that dramatically proved the importance of the abilities and safeguards that Lilly has described. It also forced her to improve the efficiency of her daily meetings and we will mention some of these changes. I will let Lilly provide some background to the story because it is informative and could prove helpful in resolving certain perplexing problems that some readers might encounter. As is typical, the crisis resulted from a significant advance in Lilly’s healing. Because important breakthroughs radically change internal dynamics, they often trigger previously unknown alters into drastic attempts to counter what they mistakenly perceive as danger, or a breakthrough can simply encourage other alters to reveal themselves in the hope that they will receive the love and healing that others are receiving. The emergence of previously unknown alters results in further breakthroughs but for a while it can seem like lurching from crisis to crisis. Lilly writes: I now have 42 parts. That’s almost twice the number as last night! Here is what happened: We had been dealing with black goo up at camp. One alter, Lacey, was covered in it when we first found her. Another was being chased by it. We didn’t know what it was but we knew what to do about it because Jesus, himself, took care of it when we found Lacey. The more alters we found, the more goo we got in the camp. It was getting out of hand. We set up goo patrols and everything. A few of us asked Jesus what the stuff was. I can handle a “No,” or “Yes,” or “Not right now,” but to my frustration he just said, “You’ll find out soon enough.” My alters and I have people pray over us once a week. One of the ladies there prayed against generational sin and the hold that it has on my family. She said that she could see in the Spirit that our DNA was covered in black slime. I was amazed because I had never told her about the black goo. I shot a questioning look at Jesus and he just made a smug nod toward me. After prayer, we checked around camp and to my surprise there was no more black stuff. I figured there would be rejoicing at this turn of events. Instead, it just seemed to make the alters more nervous. Then one of my alters, Shelly, started acting up. When she had originally appeared at camp she looked like a monkey. This was because she thought being a monkey would allow her to outrun harm and that it would help her father love her because he liked monkeys and called our sister, who he seemed to love more than us, his “little monkey.” Anyhow, Shelly began reverting to being a monkey when another alter, Max, conjured up in his imagination a giant bee to play with and it accidentally escaped and terrorized Shelly. Shelly started telling Grantley what made her so afraid that she felt safer as a monkey with the speed and agility to evade humans. She spoke of people being locked up in dog carriers. Grantley suggested that rather than become a monkey again she enter a Hiding Place. She ran to one. I checked on her. She let me in and clung to me and wouldn’t let me go. Her fear was palpable and it rocked my body. “They’re coming,” she said. I wanted to know who was coming but she wouldn’t give a clear answer. “Mommy, do you love me?” she asked. When I assured her that I did, she looked terrified and said, “Then they are going to take you, too.” I called Annalise and two other key alters to come over and explained what Shelly had said. All three of them turned pale, “We are so sorry, Lilly,” they said, “thank you for all you do”. I started freaking out. I was tired of cryptic responses and wanted something more solid. About this time I kept getting an image of a field full of dog carriers with people in them. Shadowy figures walked among the carriers carrying red hot pokers. Every now and then they would jam a poker into one of the carriers and a human occupant would howl in pain. The scene was so vivid that I could smell burning flesh. My anxiety skyrocketed. I asked Jesus what was happening. “You’ll be fine, he said. “It will be hard, but you’ll be fine.” I absolutely hate cryptic replies. By now, I was getting ready for bed. Jesus said very clearly, “Don’t take your seizure medication tonight.” I had a few choice words to say at that point. Then, as I was deciding on whether or not to sleep up at camp, he added, “And sleep up at the camp.” Usually I love to do that, but the cryptic responses and the stress was making me lean toward staying in the outside world. I glared at him. “Look at it this way,” he said. “This is the middle of the book and here is your twist in the plot!” That made me laugh. Then thought hit me. The “middle” implies being half way through, right? I looked at him with a question mark on my face. He laughed and replied, “Not necessarily. The middle is a pretty big area.” This is the kind of conversation we had last night. If it had not been this way, I am pretty sure everything would ended up much worse. I entered my nightly routine of getting to bed up at camp and fell asleep. Four hours later I woke up via my internal alarm clock. It was earlier than expected. That smelled of something Annalise would do. I set off to find her and discovered the camp was in chaos. Terrified kids I did not recognize were running around in ragged tunics stained with dirt and blood. I found all of my sister parts in the dining hall along with a man – whose name I later learned was World Changer – shouting threats. The little alters were in tears over the threats hurled at them. An older alter was arguing with the man, trying to convince him that things were different now and we were safe. But he was having none of it. He looked dazed and confused, though. I took this to be a good sign. Another of the older alters was standing between the kids and the angry man. She looked ready to take on the man. I admired her courage. Annalise was white and shaking. I snuck over to her and we stepped into a different room to talk. She told me that about twenty people, most of them children, had come out of the woods and taken over while I had slept. It took a few minutes for me to get her to stop shaking and we started to make plans. We sent a message to Jesus and asked him to take care of the littles. He said he would but suggested that we send them all over to the other camp (you’ll recall that one time we had two camps). To do that, we needed to get the man distracted. I suggested that we get him to talk to Grantley from the front seat. Fortunately, he took the bait. This gave another alter the chance to start ushering the littles to the second camp. Thankfully, one of the features we had previously built into the Message Board allowed alters wanting Grantley’s support to email him surreptitiously. Annalise used this to let Grantley know what was happening while the littles were moving to safety and World Changer was distracted by being in the driver’s seat. Allowing World Changer into the driver’s seat, however, had the drawback of us losing control of the body. Nevertheless, since we had been experimenting with dual consciousness, we had a degree of control over what would happen with the body. This proved critical because World Changer was planning to harm our body with knives. We used dual consciousness to steer away from knives and he was left with only our hands with which to hurt us. We ended up with just a few bruises. We had to be careful about the extent to which we controlled the body because if we went too far he would be aware that we were sabotaging his efforts and punish everyone. It took a while, but because we all worked together and had previously established fail- safes in our inner world, we were able to get everyone to safety and get World Changer to begin understanding our change in circumstances. One of the huge helps was the required downloading of information from the computer whenever anyone entered the driver’s seat. Without that, we could never have gotten so far this quickly. Him finally discovering that it was the Twenty First Century significantly helped. It was obvious to him that if he could be so wrong about what year it is, there could be many other things he was mistaken about. I am so proud of my sister parts! It was scary and rough but we used the teamwork we had been developing and all the tools we have been working on and stayed calm and worked in unity. We remembered that Jesus was with us and even if it meant we had to deal with pain and tiredness, our focus was on bringing everyone, including World Changer, to safety and freedom. Altogether, it took about nine hours. Like Jesus said, it was hard but we are all just fine. I feel like we did an excellent job living up to our camp motto – even if it took a lot out of us. I’m so glad that I had worked hard on this. In addition to setting up a new village for the newcomers, we now have to work on streamlining our meetings to cope with this huge influx in attendees. We’ve already got ideas. We have a new location for the meetings; an outdoor amphitheatre that accommodates many more attendees and has an assortment of blankets and pillows for comfort. The Message Board will be replaced by a giant retractable Smart Board. It is equipped with face scanning cameras so that roll call is taken automatically. If a new part comes, the camera will keep an eye on where they sit and alert the appropriate person. Missing people will be contacted after the meeting by the administrator for their age group. The meeting agenda is divided into business and an interpersonal aspect. For the business aspect we need to cover two basic things: 1. Camp wide problems They can now be logged into the computer’s administrative account. This account is private to all except those in administrative positions. Once a problem is logged, the administrator for their age group will be notified and they will be contacted within 24 hours to determine what can be done and whether the matter needs to go on the agenda. 2. Planning 1. Outside Jobs Upkeep These are chores in the outside world such as cooking and cleaning. Advisory These are typically jobs done from the back seat. For example, Allen is a very good at discerning people’s motives. He typically sits in the backseat when we are meeting new people. 2. Inside Jobs Upkeep Things need to be picked up and broken things need to be fixed. These jobs are great for newcomers. Administrative This includes those who make the decisions. Lilly and Annalise are responsible for all of what happens at camp and outside. Under them is Lacey, (who takes care of the littles) Sharon, (who takes care of the teens) and Jamie (who takes care of the adults). Each of these has a mentee under them. Interpersonal These jobs include: Greeting newcomers and getting them established Following up absentees from meetings, and bringing any resulting concerns to the notice of the appropriate people Being mentored into a new skill or position For the interpersonal aspect, we consulted Jesus. He was responsible for this part, anyway. He said he would like to set up small group meetings throughout the day. During these meetings he will do encouragement time and help resolve interpersonal conflict. Each group should have: No more than 10 people in them. A variety of ages A rotating mixture of people in them so that no group contains the same constituents every day A person who is being trained in conflict management The business meeting’s agenda will look like this: 1. A time of thankfulness. This was Jesus’ suggestion. He said that those in the administrative roles would be a great example to others by being thankful at the beginning of the meeting. It will also keep people focused in a positive direction. He leaves it to us to nominate what we are thankful. 2. Schedule update This way everyone knows where and when they need to be to complete their job. 3. Discussing camp problems. The administrators will run this portion, supported by Jesus. Problems that become too contentious will be given a separate time for discussion. 4. Reaffirmation of the motto. A positive note to end the meeting on as well as a great reminder of who we are together. This should save time and still get the job done. P.S. You will develop your own way of doing things and I guess we’ll keep tweaking what we do to make it even more effective. Just days after writing the above, for example, we decided that after our time of thankfulness together, the littles should break off for a kid version of the planning and problem solving part of the meeting. Lacey, one of our older alters, has a way of making business matters interesting for the littles That way they don’t get bored and cause disruptions during that part of the meeting. Then they return to the full meeting and if there is an issue the littles have identified we discuss it. And our inner world keeps on improving. One of the new arrivals used to be called #10 but is delighted with her new nickname, “Spunky”. She writes about their new home: Today we jumped off clouds and we even made a forest in the clouds. But all the trees are made of bubbles. You can run right into the trunk of the tree and all the bubbles go poof and blow away from you. Then, when you turn around, all the bubbles zap back together. Jesus and I played and played in there! It was so much fun! The next day Spunky wrote: Today we made the bubble tree forest even better! We made the bubbles taste like things. Strawberry bubbles. Orange bubbles. Bubblegum bubbles. Someone even made steak bubbles. Then we got a bunch of ladders so that we can climb up to the top of the tree and pop the bubbles all the way down! Totally awesome! When we get done playing in the forest we smell like fruit punch with just a little bit of steak thrown in. Mom [Lilly] came to camp and we had so much fun in the bubble forest. It was amazing! I never knew adults could have so much fun! I felt like she loved me an awful lot since she spent time with me. She is really busy! All the things she is learning! But she still came to be with me! I love her so much that I could pop like one of the bubble trees. Oh, yeah! I almost forgot! The bubbles make a new sound when they pop! Well, that depends on what the dial is set at. There are fart sounds and pop sounds and splat sounds and someone even made throw up sounds! It’s the best forest ever! I wish you guys could come and see it with us! It’s great!

How to Speed Healing How fast is too fast? (Written with Vicki Morris) We all want healing as fast as possible but, sadly, many attempts to speed healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder sabotage the entire healing process. Counselors and others will benefit from this webpage, but the primary focus is the people my wife and I especially admire: everyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D., formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder). These are people who, simply to survive, have already overcome astounding obstacles and afflictions. They will become great achievers when they heal. Thanks for the Memories? A woman with Dissociative Identity Disorder approached me with this prayer request: I want to heal without recalling all of the memories. I understand exactly where this dear woman is coming from. Bad memories can terrify us. The problem, however, is that it is our refusal to face those memories that causes Dissociative Identity Disorder. Remaining unaware of what part of us is doing (or has done) is at the very heart of D.I.D. So her prayer request makes as much sense as praying, “Lord, I don’t ever want to be separated from my children but I want nothing more to do with them.” Some things are logical impossibilities – absurdities that not even God can do. All guilt, fear and torment associated with memories need to end but this is not the same as losing those memories. What this woman has not yet grasped is that her continued inability to remember unpleasant events would be a tragedy, not a blessing. There are several aspects to this, so it will take a few paragraphs to explain. To run from memories would be to cave into false feelings of shame, fear or inability to cope. It would be to languish in needless defeat. That’s not God’s plan for you. Christ took all your shame, blame and pain, bearing it all in his own naked, tortured body so that you can lift your head high. Through Christ, you are a winner; not one who runs away, but a hero clothed with divine majesty in God’s royal family. Our walk with Christ is about love, adventure and glory. It’s not about escapism, wasting one’s life and trashing opportunities for greatness. It has no partnership with cowardice and the eternal regret it brings. We might think of ourselves as born failures but through Christ we are transformed; born anew for achievement, heroism and honor. The Almighty has astounding faith in what you can do empowered by him. You are called to jettison shame, defeatism and self-indulgence to enter into holy union with the all-powerful Conqueror and, thus endowed, to reign with him in regal splendor: 2 Timothy 2:12 If we suffer, we shall also reign with him . . . (KJV). Romans 8:17  . . . we are heirs – heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. Revelation 3:2 To him who overcomes, I will give the right to sit with me on my throne, just as I overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne. Don’t dare dishonor the Lord of glory by thinking this is beyond you. For Christ, who has invested his last breath of life into ensuring your success, impossibilities are playthings. You are one with the Almighty Lord. You are in him and he is in you; melded together in thrilling oneness. Furthermore, even if full healing without recovery of memories were neither irrational, nor a needless defeat, it would render much of your past agony a useless waste. You are passionately loved of God; the darling of his heart. He is far too devoted to you to want you to undergo such a tragic loss. Instead, his plan is to transform your past suffering into something that exalts you to eternal heights of glory like nothing else could ever achieve. His goal is not to destroy your memories but to heal your memories so that they no longer distress you and so that your past suffering becomes something uniquely valuable. Remembering your past will not only enable you to better comprehend the love of God but will equip you with the ability to minister with unique experience and conviction to other hurting people. This is the path to eternal glory. Astoundingly, not even the Eternal Son of God, the Infinite Lord of Glory, could be granted the authority to fulfill the exalted role of Ultimate High Priest without his familiarity with, and memory of, his own suffering. Someone who finds study highly taxing devotes year after arduous year to medical studies. Finally he qualifies as a doctor. Now all the hard work is behind him and at last he can truly help people, save lives and reap all the benefits of his study. Can you imagine him rendering all his efforts a useless waste by praying to forget everything he has learned? We don’t need more self-proclaimed experts who trample on other people’s feelings; arrogant theorizers grieving God by ignorantly thinking they are helping when they are devastating people who are already writhing in inner agony. The world is filled with – in fact has had its fill of – such people. What are as rare as diamonds, however, are people who truly understand; people whose advice does not come from a book or vain imagination but from genuine experience; leaders who, like Jesus, can say, “I’ve been there – follow me.” You’ve endured what it takes to qualify as one of those rare and valued people who truly know. Now, with almost all the sweat and tears behind you, will you throw it all away by praying to forget it all? The great apostle Paul seems to have suffered no loss of memory when reeling off the precise number and ways in which he was tortured: 2 Corinthians 11:24-25 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea . . . In fact, he seems to have seen his suffering as something to boast about: 2 Corinthians 11:23, 12:1 Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. . . . I must go on boasting. . . . You might long to keep suppressed from your consciousness horrific memories and/or awareness of your current emotional reaction (such as fear, pain or shame) associated with those memories. Disturbingly, however, for as long as a part of you has memories and/or emotional reactions that you have no access to, you are unable to access that part of your brain in which those memories and emotions are stored. Of particular concern is that for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder, alters (sometimes called personalities or insiders) have not just memories and emotions but other intellectual abilities. So if you have an alter you have little interaction with, those parts of your brain that you have lost access to almost certainly hold not only memories and emotions but valuable skills and intellectual abilities. I have already detailed this in another webpage so you can skip this if you wish but it is worth repeating here, just in case you missed that page. Of course, not everyone has every ability, but people with Dissociative Identity Disorder are likely to feel certain they do not have certain abilities and yet have those very abilities locked away in a part of the brain they are currently too scared to access. These abilities could already be in a quite developed form or able to be developed far quicker than most people are capable of. The possibilities are almost limitless and will vary from person to person but in a previous webpage I provided a few examples of improved abilities that people who, in an attempt to protect themselves from unwanted memories or feelings, could be cutting themselves off from. In case you missed that list, I will repeat it here. By connecting with his or her alters, a person might end up with remarkably improved: * Eyesight * Manual dexterity * Ability to use the non-dominant hand * Surefootedness, such as ability to climb rugged terrain * Athletic ability * Short-term or long-term memory * Musical ability * Speed reading skills * Creative cooking * Mathematical ability * Direction finding and navigational skills * Ability to thoroughly enjoy marital relations * Grammar and spelling * Creative writing * A flair for public speaking * Sense of humor * Linguistic ability * Artistic ability * Dress sense * Parenting skills * Ability to handle stress * People skills * Freedom from certain phobias * Spiritual abilities such as spiritual warfare * Intimate experiences with God The above tiny overview should suffice to give a little insight into the tragic implications of an intellectual loss. So let’s move on and gain a little insight into the seriousness of an emotional loss. We will start with an analogy: if you were desperate enough to avoid seeing anything evil, you could decide to literally blind yourself. The problem, of course, is that no matter how much this way of rendering yourself unable to see evil things might feel like protecting yourself, it would mean that you could never see beauty and things you desperately need to see. You would be severely handicapped, thus reducing the amount of good you could achieve. Likewise, totally cutting yourself off from unpleasant feelings cannot be done without cutting yourself off from certain good feelings. You would lose your zest for life and various enjoyments that God longs to bless you with. Moreover, it would emotionally handicap you, thus lowering the amount of good you could do. To suppress an alter will do more than diminish your intellectual and emotional capacity, however. It will directly diminish you spiritually. Christians sometimes talk of head knowledge versus heart knowledge. Head knowledge lets you know a spiritual truth intellectually but it does little or nothing for you. This is because, even though you might be unconscious of what is happening within you, the life-changing power of that truth is being sabotaged by inner doubts or fears or lack of conviction or tightly held presumptions that are contrary to that spiritual truth. If you remain cut off from awareness of what is going on within you, or have little or no interaction with an alter, that part of you is cut off from your spiritual experience and insight, thus condemning yourself to having a part of you that will continually undermine the strength of your spiritual convictions and relationship with God. There are also moral implications. You might, for example, be desperate to break a sinful habit but a part of you has no idea that the habit should be broken and/or that part has no conception of how to draw upon the power of Christ to exercise self-control. So, unknown to you, part of you could be sabotaging your good intentions, not because any part is incurably evil – with God nothing is incurable – but simply because you have not sufficiently interacted with a part of you for that part to know and benefit from your understanding of Christ. So to suppress an alter, or to avoid befriending that part of you, is to diminish your intellectual, emotional and spiritual capacity. The only way to honor the God who gave you all this amazing potential is to get to know that alter, courageously embrace the unpleasant memories and feelings the alter has, and to increase your abilities by allowing the alter to develop spiritually, intellectually and emotionally. Ironically, facilitating this can only occur by empowering that alter, even if that alter is currently anti-God. This can seem a terrifying thing to do. It might seem that the alter is evil, and you could wrongly imagine that to empower him or her is to increase evil in your life. The reality, however, is that if you have found Christ and been empowered by the good Lord, then so can this part of you. And the only way this alter can be transformed into someone kind, loving, gentle and devoted to God is to be allowed to surface and to interact with you, or with others, who can help that part discover that Jesus is safe, kind, gentle, patient, wise and the best friend that anyone could ever have. No matter how strange some alters might initially seem, no alter is a non-human invader; a demon squatting in your brain to be fought, rebuked or resisted. On the contrary, even the most obnoxious alter is a long-lost but indispensable part of a person for whom Jesus gave his life to redeem. Each alter is a lost sheep that the Good Shepherd never forgets or neglects. Rather, our Lord focuses all his attention on it. He cares so deeply that he lovingly leaves the ninety-nine to devote all his effort to search for the lost one so that he can rejoice over lovingly restoring it to the fold. We are called to be like Jesus, the Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the lost. Even if you mistakenly see an alter as an enemy, remember that the One you are called to emulate loves his enemies more than his own life and is continually working on wooing them so that they will eventually discover that he is their best friend. We are called to turn the other cheek, rejoice when we are persecuted and win to Christ those who do not know him. Learning to do this begins with doing it with one’s alters. Each of your alters is a vital, irreplaceable part of you. So for any alter to develop in any way means that you are developing. Empowering your alters to develop transforms you into the faithful servant in Jesus’ parable, rather than the one who buried his talent. Loving your alters and giving them the freedom to develop is Christlike behavior that glorifies God. The Story So Far & Beyond Anyone not totally healed from D.I.D. is in the exciting position of being blessed with abilities that have yet to be fully discovered. If you have D.I.D, then both intellectually and in terms of spiritual development, emotional wholeness and fulfillment, alters are your most valuable asset. Wanting brain damage would make as much sense as wanting to be rid of your alters. Yes, without your alters you might temporarily be rid of some inner pain, conflict, sabotaging of your good intentions and shaming yourself but the way to permanently be rid of this is not through suppressing or oppressing your alters but by giving them every opportunity to heal and develop so that they can do you immense and continual good. Like a potentially good marriage ending in separation because of what would have proved a relatively brief rough patch, an alter going into hiding is a defeat, even if it might seem more peaceful than the alter regularly interacting with you. For as long as the alter is in hiding, that alter’s unique help, insights, abilities and emotional support is lost, as is the opportunity for that alter to heal and for the alter’s abilities to continue to develop. The result might in the short term seem deceptively easier but it intellectually cripples and emotionally handicaps the person and it chokes healing, even though the person is typically unaware of the extent of the tragedy. It is like a child imagining it would be a gain if a baby brother died. Yes, both rivalry and the baby’s annoying crying would cease. The older child, however, has little conception of how the baby would have changed if allowed to grow and how he would have become a much-needed companion, playmate and support. It often turns out that the alter who seems the most annoying and useless ends up developing into one of the most needed, in regard to the invaluable abilities and the emotional support and the deepening of your relationship with God that the alter ends up providing. Contrary to what might seem intuitively right, your spiritual, intellectual and emotional development hinges on you continually empowering your alters. Both you and they should see integration as merely a further step in this long process. Integration is not getting rid of alters; it is joining forces with them. And the more alters that a particular alter merges with, the more empowered this alter will be. Any merging, however, is usually a long way down the healing/empowering process and any attempt to force the pace is likely to prove counterproductive. It is tempting to romanticize the strategies the minds of highly distraught children develop just to survive. In order to increase motivation to heal, however, let us be brutally honest. Sometimes called Multiple Personality Disorder (M.P.D.), Dissociative Identity Disorder occurs when a person’s mind, instead of remaining one harmonious whole, gets broken up into fragments. In this reaction to emotional trauma, a part of the person’s awareness is cut off from other parts of the person. The result is like a committee in which no one knows what anyone else is planning. The attractive side to this chaos is that it allows a form of escapism, giving part of the person a vacation from dealing with consequences of the trauma. Like cutting off a limb to temporarily reduce pain, however, the cost of this escapism is enormous. It both significantly reduces mental function and prevents the person from healing from the devastating effects of past hurts. For as long as there is inadequate communication between parts of a person’s mind, the person will not only fail to reach his or her full intellectual potential but will remain in emotional torment. This has spiritual and relationship ramifications and keeps its victims far from peace, happiness and fulfillment that would otherwise be theirs. If someone in this situation never makes sufficient effort to understand and cooperate closely with other parts of his or her mind, this needless tragedy will grind on for an entire lifetime. Such people will have an awareness of how hard their life is but will have little comprehension of how wonderful their life would have been if only they had courageously persisted in reconnecting with their other parts. On the other hand, those who persist on the healing journey are repeatedly amazed to discover talents and abilities they never knew they had and keep finding deeper peace, fulfillment and achievement. What makes reconnecting so complex is that it is not reassembling a machine, but reconnecting parts of the human mind, each of which has gained full and independent access to human intelligence, emotions, will, memories, and so on. Each part has become so adept at functioning individually that each has become like an individual with distinct desires, agenda, and all the complexities of a full human being. The Seldom-Understood Goal of Healing Sometimes a host (the alter who is most often in control) sees it as a failure to let other alters ever take control and interact with the real world. For a host to retreat from the real world out of fear and leave other alters floundering might indeed be a failure on the host’s part but it is entirely different to let other alters take over for a little while in a safe environment so that they can break their mentally crippling isolation by expressing themselves and learn about the real world. If it can be achieved, the ideal safe environment is where a more experienced alter remains aware of what is happening and is able to guide the alter should the need arise and even, in an emergency, regain control. If this skill has not yet been learned, however, letting the alter take over is still safe and desirable if a trustworthy counselor or friend who understands D.I.D. is present. Some hosts (or even counselors) might mistakenly regard it as dissociation to let other alters come out and relate to the real world, but it is actually the opposite. Whereas to dissociate is to be in denial of an aspect of reality, freeing one’s alters to relate to the real world is both acknowledging the reality of having alters and is helping alters discover current reality. If for years you kept a baby locked in a room 24/7 with nothing but four walls to see, no one to communicate with and nothing such a book or television to learn from, the baby might grow physically but mentally he would never grow. Likewise, not letting alters interact with the real world is an act of cruelty that stops little alters from ever growing up, and it prevents older alters from learning new things and seeing through the lies that have kept them reeling in the inner pain of fear or guilt or with shattered self-esteem or unaware of God’s eagerness to befriend and help them. The goal of healing is not to gain control of your alters nor to end switching from alter to alter. Rather, the goal is to gain control of your full intellectual, emotional and spiritual capacity, and switching is a vital stage in achieving that goal. Not every counselor realizes this. Some mistakenly presume that if switching has ended, the person has become ‘normal” and so must be ‘healed.’ In reality, however, if parts of the person are still suppressed, that person is functioning far below his or her full capacity. If all alters are sufficiently allowed access to the real world they will each gradually mature and grow more and more alike, thus making switching increasingly less dramatic for the person and less detectable by other people. Eventually, the alters will become so alike that they will see no point in remaining separated from each other and they will gradually merge until there is no switching, simply because they are all empowered and truly one. To stop switching while there are still separate alters, however, would be to short-circuit the entire process and prevent healing. Alters who have been kept in isolation might initially be so angry about what they have suffered or have had no opportunity to mature or know so little about the adult world that they temporarily embarrass the host. Anyone who understands D.I.D., however, regards this as perfectly normal and knows that it is only temporary while the alter is at last being given the opportunity to normalize. The brutal truth is that if you have alters who are just in the early stages of healing, you might find some of them not just an embarrassment but a huge source of emotional pain and confusion. In their deep distress and confusion, one or two might even try to kill you – in which case you have an urgent need to win them over; turning them into friends who trust you. Nevertheless, as you continue your healing journey you will discover that not only are alters not your enemies, they are, next to God himself, your greatest asset. It is smarter to hack off your arm and leg than to keep your alters suppressed or deny them the sometimes inconvenient and embarrassing things they need. To disregard them is to perpetuate your inner pain and the fragmenting of your intellect and keep you from the heights of fulfillment and achievement that you would otherwise reach. For Christians, the real goal of healing is not the ending of discomfort, but every part of you falling so in love with Christ as to eagerly yield to him, thus empowering you not only to reach your full intellectual, emotional, social and vocational potential, but your full spiritual potential; maximizing your ability to know and glorify the God whose love and devotion to you defies comprehension. That alone is the path to true fulfillment, and achievement that will last for all eternity. The Challenge Anyone who forces his/her will on someone or puts someone down, silences him/her, suppresses him/her or despises the weak and the hurting, is an abuser. To be like Christ is to have a heart that continually seeks to encourage, uplift, buildup, liberate and empower people. It is to love the unlovely, to do good to those who are nasty. Who have you made your hero, the one you model your life on? Christ or an abuser? Who are you currently most like? What does the way your treat those closest to you – who share your body – tell you? If until now you have unwittingly acted more like an abuser than a friend to certain parts of you that Christ loves more than his own life and let himself be tortured to death to redeem, you can end your shame. You can look to Christ and let him transform you into someone who loves as he does. A common but serious mistake is for people with D.I.D. to make decisions against their alter’s will. Whether this happens simply because they are unaware of their alter’s wishes or because they assume they know better than their alters, the results can be equally damaging. There are three reasons why disregarding an alter’s wishes can stop healing. 1. It is a law of nature that anything that grows must go through stages that cannot be skipped and there is a point beyond which these stages cannot be sped up. Alters must be allowed to develop at their own pace. 2. Forcing change upon alters triggers panic that paralyses them, preventing further growth. 3. Disregarding the wishes of one’s alters breaks down trust and cooperation with one’s alters, thus perpetuating fragmentation. As already touched on, two other essentials for ending fragmentation and becoming whole are the courage to let oneself remember and the courage to let oneself feel. Healing from trauma and reconnecting with alters requires more love and wisdom and trust between alters than humans are likely to ever muster. With such vast reserves of love, wisdom and trust required, anyone would be a fool to rob himself or herself of full healing by remaining distant from the only Source of infinite love and wisdom and from the only Person who is fully trustworthy – God himself. Now let’s move beyond this overview to the nitty-gritty. Why Forcing Change Upon an Alter Makes Things Worse For Yourself God has worked into the very fabric of creation this law of nature: Mark 4:26-28  . . . This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man scatters seed on the ground. Night and day, whether he sleeps or gets up, the seed sprouts and grows, though he does not know how. All by itself the soil produces grain – first the stalk, then the head, then the full kernel in the head This applies to almost every living thing. If, for example, you want an acorn to grow into a mighty oak that everyone admires, you have no option but to let it slowly progress through every stage from tender shoot to spindly sapling, all the way through to full maturity. Refuse to let it go through the sapling stage and you will never get the oak you long for. Refuse to treat a shoot with greater tenderness than you would a tree and you will never get a tree. In the same way, if you want a little alter to grow up, you must let the alter go through childish stages. Should you not let an alter have its fill of childish things, that part of you will remain emotionally trapped as a stunted, hurting alter and, without you realizing it, this will in turn stunt your own intellect and your emotional maturity. Moreover, no matter how much you pretend it is not happening, the alter’s unhealed inner agony will flood over to you. So if you feel embarrassed about little alters, let that embarrassment drive you to facilitate their growth by meeting their current needs for childish things. Only when those needs are fully met are they able to grow up and leave childish things behind. To understand why forcing your will upon alters or making decisions without their consent can stop healing, we need to remember that alters were formed by trauma they had no control over. When new decisions are made without consulting one’s alters, it triggers panic by reminding them of the most horrific time in their existence – a time that corresponded with them having no control over what happened to them. What complicates things still further is that panic freezes one’s mental processes. So even if the initial panic is an over-reaction, it hinders sane evaluation of the implications of the new event. In order to think clearly, the panic needs to subside. So alters need time to ponder the implications of a change, not so much because they need an unusually long time to think but because they need long enough to calm down in order to think clearly. To disregard an alter’s needs and fears is to act like an abuser. This will almost certainly throw them into panic and perhaps even trigger flashbacks and other horrific reactions. How could this not destroy trust between the alter and the part of the person that acted like an abuser by disregarding the alter’s need? And how could fragmentation – and all its associated ills – end, without all the fragmented parts of a person trusting each other so much that they work together as one harmonious whole? So trust is critical. The Surprising Importance of ‘Childish’ Things One of the most common causes of lost trust between parts of a person revolves around failing to understand the importance of ‘childish’ things in the healing of an alter. Let’s start with what for brevity we will call dolls, but they could be stuffed toys or figurines or other objects, such as a favorite blanket or article of clothing. It can just as easily apply to pets but since most adults can better understand an attachment to pets, they usually cause less bewilderment and embarrassment to adults. Safety is of paramount importance to anyone who feels seriously threatened, and most alters were not only once in grave danger but until they are healed they are petrified of a return to that danger. So if they find anything – no matter how pathetic – that helps them feel a little more secure, it will assume enormous importance to them, even though certain other alters (especially older ones) might not understand this. Many alters are terrified that anyone else might end up judging them or turning on them, but they know a doll will not. This is why for many young alters, a doll could be the only thing in the universe that helps them feel safe. Furthermore, trapped within alters can be such horrifically intense and painful feelings that it is not unusual for them to worry that their feelings could kill them or drive them insane or make them dangerously ill. They are petrified about getting in touch with their feelings or expressing them and yet those feelings are so horrendous that they scream for attention. Whether it be through hugs or actually talking to the doll, a doll can be the one thing that they feel able to bond with, and express their feelings to, thus making their almost unbearable life a little more tolerable. With nothing else able to fill this desperately needed role, a strong dependence upon the doll is inevitable. More than some concession to childishness, our experience with alters has convinced us that dolls are a therapeutic tool. Moreover, we are convinced that using them has divine approval. At the end of this page is a link describing how an alter received a doll in a manner that was so obviously of God that we are left certain that God considers the use of dolls important. Dolls can be so important, and yet adults can be so embarrassed about allowing their alters to benefit from them that if you require further persuading to let your young alters have the dolls they need, besides the above-mentioned link we have prepared additional information, including scientific evidence. More About Dolls Why Dolls, Stuffed Toys, and Even a “Security Blanket” Can Be Vital for Healing Sometimes the comfort dolls provide comes through alters playing role reversal with their doll. In this case, the doll is imagined to have feelings (and those feelings are like those that torment the alter) and the alter assumes the role of offering comfort and understanding (just like what the alter himself/herself would dearly love to receive). Since, in this imaginary situation, it is the doll’s feelings, and not the alter’s, it is not so terrifying for the alter to explore the feelings. Through the doll, the alter is able to connect with the feelings in a loving and safe environment that the alter has created in his or her mind. It is quite normal for any child to became highly attached to a doll, stuffed toy or some other object – even a favorite blanket. So how much more should this be so for highly traumatized children who feel they cannot receive love and comfort from their parents. (Even the children of loving, caring parents will feel terrifyingly isolated if their abusers trick them into believing the abuse is the children’s fault and/or convince them that telling their parents will result in something catastrophic occurring.) There is even scientific evidence of the value of dolls to children who feel deprived of love. Psychologists experimented with monkeys – it would be too cruel to do it on humans. The monkeys were reared without a mother. In one group, each monkey was kept in an empty cage. Monkeys in the other group were treated the same except they were given a large stuffed doll that looked rather hideous but vaguely like an adult mother. The significant finding was that monkeys in the second group not only clung to their doll but were more bold and acted more confident than those who had nothing. Way Beyond Dolls We have devoted so many words to dolls, solely because they are one example of a vast range of possible things that alters might crave that anyone with little understanding of alters could be tempted to dismiss as stupid or trivial. If you disregard anything that an alter indicates as being important to him/her, you could end up making the serious mistake of denying them what they – and hence you – need to heal. Other than God himself, the best clues to knowing what a specific alter needs in order to heal is in that very alter. Like all people, alters are individuals. They have unique past experiences that create unique needs. To highlight how critical it is to listen to each alter and not presume we know best, we will now seem to undo all our previous arguments about the benefits of dolls by stating that for a particular alter, a doll might not have the positive effect it has for other alters, and could actually hinder growth. If you would like to know what sort of experiences could cause an alter to react so differently to dolls: Alters Differ Warning: Contains possible triggers A friend has some alters who like dolls, but she has other alters who are quite disturbed by dolls. Some of her alters even want to violently attack and “kill” dolls or stuffed toys. My friend lists her following experiences, any one of which would be sufficient for an alter to dislike dolls or be terrified of them. * As an adult, before knowing she had Dissociative Identity Disorder, she liked watching horror movies, a few of which featured dolls, such as killer dolls who would come to life at night and attack people. * Her mother, who was very cold toward her, had dolls that her mother seemed to love and value more than her. * Her memory is not yet clear but she suspects that some of her abusers somehow used dolls in the abuse. Another friend has one or two alters for whom dolls are a source not of comfort but of guilt because an abuser used dolls as if they were payment for sexual favors. So our point is not that you should always give young alters dolls but that you should always take very seriously whatever they indicate is important to them, no matter how much it clashes with your own priorities and presumptions. If you have alters, there are many things critical to their emotional well-being that you are likely to find even more bizarre than needing a doll. Here’s one example: even something as seemingly insignificant as washing an old sweater can traumatize an alter. As was the case with dolls, we’ll give a brief explanation to help you understand the reason for it, but nothing an alter says should need to make sense to you before you take it seriously. If an alter tells you it is important to him/her, that should suffice. If it isn’t sinful or harmful you should very strongly consider doing whatever the alter wants. That washing an old sweater could be upsetting will seem bizarre until you consider that quite average young children can become deeply attached to, for example, a blanket (fans of the Peanut’s cartoon strip will recall Linus’s ‘security blanket’). Moreover, some women can feel ugly and hence insecure about wearing almost everything except for one piece of clothing that they feel covers them better, or fits better. Furthermore, an alter could in the past have had a bad experience akin to having a sweater washed, such as something treasured being destroyed by washing. This does not mean you could never wash the article but that you need to proceed slowly and cautiously, patiently explaining and carefully listening to the alter’s concerns until all concerns are allayed. Alters need what they see as age-appropriate means of comfort and to deny themselves that comfort is a double-whammy. Not only does denial mean they are missing out on comfort that – since they are deeply hurting – they desperately need, but to deny them is to act like an abuser and so trigger fears and painful memories associated with past abusive disregard for their needs. It could also drive them to try to seek destructive forms of ‘comfort,’ such as self-harm or over-eating or chemical highs. For alters formed as babies, age-appropriate means of comfort could include such things as lullabies, pacifiers or drinking formula milk from a bottle. Again, it is not for you to decide what they need. Your role is to get to know them and give them whatever they indicate they want. The only usual exceptions should be if what they request would expose yourself and the alter to ridicule, or is unhealthy: * physically – such as candy if you are diabetic * psychologically – such as illicit drugs or porn * spiritually – such as occult practices or hurting people. If there are serious obstacles to granting your alters what they want, lovingly explain the reasons and seek to find acceptable alternatives. Strive diligently to find workarounds, such as buying candy suitable for diabetics, finding times and places where it would not result in ridicule, reading them uplifting stories instead of porn, getting pocket dolls so you can take them with you inconspicuously, and so on. For babies not yet potty trained, diapers can be comforting, rather than exposing them to the possibility of soiling clothes or bed. Moreover, you may find diapers necessary when baby alters make their presence felt. Yes, by suppressing baby alters you might reduce, or perhaps even eliminate, the need for diapers but suppressed alters never heal. Building Trust Since D.I.D. handicaps people by fragmenting intellectual abilities, healing involves reconnecting all the fragments (alters). Put another way: in order to regain full mental capacity, alters must cooperate; working together as a team. Such teamwork (and associated healing) is impossible without all of a person’s alters valuing and trusting each other. Since disregarding an alter’s feelings and wishes undermines any such trust, it sabotages teamwork, bringing healing screeching to a halt. Simple things can help build the trust that is so critical to healing. For example, tell an alter worried about the washing of a sweater, “How about we consider washing it in two days’ time, so you have time to think about it.” Then, when the time arrives, ask if it is okay to proceed. When the clean sweater is returned, the alter can see that you kept your word and trust begins to grow. It is frightfully easy to dismiss alters as embarrassing nuisances and treat them as rivals or even enemies when they are actually your greatest assets. And rather than want to hurt or embarrass you, they crave your love and approval. They respond powerfully to praise and compliments. Unconditional love will win their desire to please you, whereas criticism, disapproval, rejection or punishment will have the opposite effect. Until they heal, alters are in inner agony and, despite one’s best intentions, people who are hurting are very vulnerable to further hurt. As Grantley wrote in a webpage about how to comfort people who are: If you were treating the open wounds of accident victims you would realize that the most gentle, well-meaning touch could send patients reeling. You would not be offended if someone you were seeking to help lashed out in pain with almost involuntary action. You would half expect it. But imagine the confusion if the wounds were invisible and the person looked uninjured. Consider the further complication if in that person’s experience everyone who had tried to help (and how does he know you will be any different?) had in their ignorance done little but inflict pain. That’s the norm for someone who is hurting inside. Emotionally wounded people cannot help but be highly sensitive. Words hit them like whips. It is vital that they be treated verbally with the careful tenderness you would use if you were dressing gaping physical wounds. Once we understand the seriousness of emotional wounds, it’s surprisingly easy to employ the Christlike graces of turning the other cheek and using the soft answer that turns away wrath. When we realize an outburst is just the pain talking, we no longer take it to heart. Only a fool takes personally the actions of someone drunk with pain. It could be helpful to preface one’s remarks to a sensitive alter with, “I approve of you. I believe in you and think the world of you. So nothing I say should ever be interpreted as a put-down or rejection.” Such wording helps keep alters from jumping to wrong conclusions, and frees them up to understand what you are really saying. Simple things like tucking young alters into bed at night, reading them age-appropriate books that they like, giving them special time to be alone with their toys, putting their favorite sweater under the pillow, or letting them hold it while they sleep, can go a long way to provide the security from which healing flows. Another important thing is to defend your alters if they are ever threatened or criticized. If they publicly say or write something you approve, try to publicly honor their statement. If they receive criticism, be diplomatic but stand by your alters. Never betray their trust by revealing their secrets – or even their existence – until they are ready to do this themselves. Be aware that alters might overhear you at a time when you have assumed they have not tuned in to what is occurring. Next to encouraging each alter to interact with God, these things are powerful in bringing healing. A friend of mine with Dissociative Identity Disorder went to considerable effort to obtain a bracelet displaying the words Stronger Together . Those two words form a truth that should be impressed upon the heart of everyone wanting to heal. If you have alters, they have a deep need to be heard and you have a deep need to listen to them. Until they start communicating, alters have been kept in psychologically crippling solitary confinement, and you have been kept cut off from a significant part of your mental capacity, your emotions and your memories. In addition to merely being heard, alters need to be believed. Most likely, they suffered horrifically and no one believed it. You need to begin to undo the damage by believing them. They could well have been formed precisely to ‘protect’ you from the truth because at the time you were not psychologically strong enough to take it, but this situation must end. You must muster the courage to face the truth so that you can regain your full mind, and if what they reveal seems unbelievable it could well be because you are still preferring to live in denial; preferring perhaps to believe the lie that your abuser really was the respectable person he or she pretended to be. Nevertheless, just as sincere children can sometimes get things mixed up, so can little alters. For example, we know a dear alter who was sexually abused in a carnival ‘haunted house.’ She was too young to understand that the ‘haunted house’ was make-believe. The fear was real, however, and so was the abuse. Additionally, any alter who is trying to piece together just fragments of surfaced memories could make a sincere mistake. For example, I know someone who mistakenly concluded that it must have been her father who abused her because she could not recall her father allowing her to go anywhere without his supervision and because she could only remember the face of only one of what seemed to be two abusers. After prayer her memory became clearer and it turned out that what had seemed like a second abuser was an image that had somehow formed in her mind representing the abuser’s demon. The Courage to Let Oneself Remember It is impossible to have a mind that is whole if part of you knows things of extreme significance that another part of you knows nothing about. It is impossible to heal from all the damaging effects of a fractured mind without having the courage to remember. Whatever happened in your past, it happened when you were younger and so had less mental and spiritual maturity/resources than you currently have, plus the situation has most likely changed such that your tormentor now has less power over you. When they are kept in the dark, things seem scarier than when brought into the light. Likewise the truth ends up being much easier to cope with than the unknown. It is far easier on yourself to face things and get them resolved than be haunted by fears of the unknown for the rest of your life. Encourage your alters to share their secrets with you. It will relieve them of isolation and horrific burdens that they have far less resources than you have to cope with. For example, they are probably riddled with guilt over something they will never know was not their fault unless they open up to you so that you can give them the benefit of your adult understanding. If you are tempted to keep yourself ignorant (with all the intellectual handicaps and emotional agony that entails) because you worry there might possibly be some skeleton in your past that you could not forgive yourself for doing; your fears are groundless. Once the full, liberating truth of the Gospel is understood – and tragically vast numbers of Christians do not understand it – you can live peaceably with yourself no matter what atrocious sins filled your past. The Bible strips away all human pride by revealing that the wages of sin – just one ‘little’ sin – is death. You cannot get deader than dead. Since everyone has sinned, no one can be more lost or more depraved than anyone else. Just as an athlete and an invalid are equally unable to reach the moon by jumping, so the most saintly person on this planet and the most sadistic serial killer and rapist are equally unable to reach God’s minimum standards. Outside of Christ, the most ‘godly’ person on this planet is just as much a moral failure and has just as much reason for abject shame as the most obviously wicked person. Each needs Christ equally and if either of them can find cleansing and forgiveness and total acceptance in God, the other can receive it just as easily and as fully. No matter what your past, you can be cleansed and granted virgin-innocence and honored by all of heaven for your crystal purity. The same applies if you worry that a loved one might have committed some grievous offense. The Courage to Let Oneself Feel To be mentally whole while cutting oneself off from feelings is just as impossible as it is to be mentally whole and cut oneself off from memories. Healing requires you to get in touch with all your feelings. This seems scary at first because of the strong, unpleasant feelings buried within, but by connecting with those feelings they are able to be released so that they no longer haunt you, and then you are free to connect with wonderful feelings and come fully alive. Play It is highly beneficial for alters to regularly play games with each other and have fun together. It is not only enjoyable, it builds trust and teamwork. And it not only promotes healing, it helps them develop valuable skills. What alters enjoy doing together will differ from person to person. It might be reading or telling stories, or working on an art project or playing computer games or dancing or chasing each other. The possibilities are almost endless, but you will discover which activities appeal most to you and your alters. The Most Effective Way to Heal Fast All alters desperately need Jesus. They are usually tormented by guilt and shame and feel so worthless that it is not uncommon for some to even be convinced that they are evil. Jesus’ whole reason for coming to earth was to resolve these stupendous needs in a way far beyond what anyone in the universe – and most certainly more than any counselor – could ever achieve. He, alone, as the utterly Innocent One took upon himself all our guilt; suffering our full punishment and then cleansing us utterly and granting us his moral perfection, purity, goodness and exalted status with God, the Holy Judge of heaven and earth. Obviously these truths should be explained more simply and in more detail, but it is imperative that alters be made aware of them. Alters also usually need someone to mother and father them, but because they are now in an adult body this is rarely possible, nor is it usually safe to seek it from anyone other than Jesus for this role, as it could expose both alter and host to ridicule or abuse, or to devastation if the mother/father figure needed to leave at some later stage. Only Jesus is utterly safe in giving hugs, tucking alters into bed and so on, and fully understands the best way to help at every stage of healing, and offers the total security of never getting sick or burned out, changing, moving away, or dying. And no one understands any of us like Jesus does, nor has his wisdom. Moreover, Jesus fervently loves alters with total selflessness without any sexual overtones and longs to comfort and heal them. There is a critical blockage to receiving Jesus’ help, however. Because Jesus is not an abuser, he will not force himself upon alters, no matter how much he yearns to help and knows they need him. A further hindrance is that alters often have such distorted ideas about Jesus (confusing him with abusers, for example, or believing lies people have said about him) that they can be terrified of him. So the greatest of all things that anyone can do for alters is to reassure them of how gentle, kind, caring, patient, understanding and comforting Jesus is and how much he wants to take their pain upon himself – bearing their guilt, fear and inner pain as the alter’s Alter – and be their devoted friend and have lots of safe fun with them. (Yes, because play is important to every young alter he longs to play with them in a way that builds them up intellectually and in self-esteem and shows them great respect.) Encourage alters to dialog with Jesus. Assure them that he will respect whatever boundaries they put up and that he will wait for as long as it takes for them to be sure that they are safe with him. Jesus is the perfect counselor and the ultimate healer. Once they commence talking with Jesus, the door to wondrous things has opened. Bringing New Alters Up to Speed I vividly recall what a hard, exhausting slog it was to assist the first few alters of Christine’s alters who revealed themselves. She was the first person I had ever helped with Dissociative Identity Disorder. We would have felt particularly daunted had we known back then that we would end up discovering over sixty parts – and some people have very many hundreds of parts. Thankfully, the process gradually got easier and faster as we found out what to tell each part whenever we first discovered one we had never met before. The following is a detailed suggested outline of what to tell your parts as soon as you can after first meeting each one. I encourage you to always use this outline so as not to miss critical points. Nevertheless, you will need to tailor it to your situation and to the specific alter you are talking with, such as simplifying the language if the alter is young. It is particularly important to introduce the following information at whatever pace this part of you is able to go. With some alters, you are likely to be able to say very little at first and will instead need to spend much time winning their confidence and proving by your actions that you truly understand and care for them. For an explanation as to why alters can fear or despise you and how to overcome these serious obstacles to healing, see the How to Find Every Alter & Get Each Alter to Talk link at the end of this webpage. Especially when parts have not been around for years, they often find almost any information overwhelming because what you share is likely to clash alarmingly with their expectations. They might suddenly retreat into hiding after you say a few words. That’s fine. They are just taking needed time-out to think through the new information and come to terms with it. When they are ready, they will pop out again and then, after gently reassuring and comforting them, they can be told a little more until they again feel the need for a break. They will recover from the initial shock and adjust (often in a matter of just a few days) and get stronger and stronger. Obviously, any of your parts who are capable of reading could read the following without your help. If possible, however, it is highly preferable for you to go through it with each part, sensitively expanding on anything you think would be helpful, responding to any questions, and modifying anything, as you see fit. A significant advantage of your contribution is that it will immediately help the part feel less alone and more a valued member of a close-knit group of friends that truly care about each other, help each other and are working toward a common goal. The following is what a part who fully understands D.I.D. might tell a part who has been kept out of the loop for a long while and so knows very little. Text in square brackets like [this] are notes to the more experienced alter. Why We Need Each Other Hi, my name is [the alter who understands D.I.D. inserts his/her name]. You are important to me and if you let me, I would love to be your friend. I have information that can help you and you have knowledge and abilities that can help me, too. If you know me and I didn’t treat you right, I am deeply sorry and I long to make it up to you. I should have listened to you and supported you. I never understood how important you are and how much respect and kindness you deserve. How can I put things right? How can I be the friend to you that you deserve? I would like to explain what I have discovered about who you and I are and why you are so important. Through no fault of our own, we suffered awful experiences. As a result, we found ourselves faced with this daunting challenge: how can anyone survive when faced with multiple problems, just one of which is so overwhelming as to be almost beyond human ability to endure? How could anyone put aside all the pressures and distractions of one mind-numbing problem long enough to focus on other vitally important, highly demanding matters? Consider, for example, a child whose home-life fills her with terror. She is safer at school but when she is there she needs to somehow block from her mind awareness of her home-life in order to function at school without being incapacitated by anguish over what she suffered yesterday and paralyzed with fear about what might happen tonight. Here’s another type of problem: children have a deep need to believe they have a kind mother who can be trusted to keep them safe. As much as possible, a child needs to be able to enjoy times when her mother is nice, without those times being ruined by the knowledge that occasionally her mother acts toward her more like a terrifying monster than a mother. Out of absolute necessity, a person having to cope with any such traumatic, conflicting situations, is forced to become very skilled at blocking out awareness of some parts of her life in order to sufficiently focus on other necessary aspects of her life that must be attended to. Such a person’s mind becomes rigidly divided into various parts, each of which is freed up to focus on certain tasks by being kept unaware of highly distracting and upsetting matters that other parts of her mind must deal with. You and I are parts of one clever mind that was forced – by the immensity of what we have had to cope with – to be divided and kept unaware of the distressing concerns of other parts. Circumstances are now improving, however, and we no longer need to be so divided and unaware of each other’s problems. From now on, the more aware of each other we become, and the more we do things together, the more we can achieve and the better we will feel and the safer we will be. Things are Better Than You Realize Reality was once so horrible for us that to give ourselves a necessary break from it and help us feel safer, we partly withdrew into a fantasy world. We were so good at it that our fantasy world began to seem completely real. As a result, the truth can be staggeringly different from what we expect it to be. Once we get used to it, however, we will discover that reality is actually a pleasant surprise. Life is now better than it ever used to be and it is now safe and good to come out of our fantasy world and re-enter the real world. [Explain to the new alter why things are now safer than when that part was formed. You might have moved location so that your former abusers no longer have ready access to you. Perhaps your former abusers are even dead or infirmed. Your body is more mature, which means you are no longer dependent upon abusers. Perhaps you are also stronger and less easily overpowered physically. Being older means you are more likely to be believed if you report abuse to authorities, thus making abusers more frightened of you. You are likely to now have greater resources and maturity to cope, and greater ability to see through the scary and condemning lies abusers told you. Also share with the part lots of good things you have experienced since that part was formed. It might take an effort to think of good things, but they are there.] You used to be surrounded by people who, despite claiming to be right, told you horrific but convincing lies to trick you into making you feel bad about yourself and scared. You did not deserve to be lied to and put down. You might have been treated as if you were less than human, or you might have wished you were less than human. Or you might have longed to be the opposite sex because it seemed that if you were you might have been treated better. But now it is safe to be fully human and to be the gender that your body is, and now you have the support of the rest of us who live in this body. We believe in you and respect you and long to be your warm, safe friends, if you want us. For a long while, we did not understand that being treated badly had split us into different parts, all of whom are good and important, share the same body and belong to each other. This, and other misconceptions, caused some of us to ignore each other and accidentally – and sometimes even deliberately – hurt each other. We are very sorry about this. Thankfully, those days are over and we all want to be best friends with every part. We are now kind to each other, respect each other, listen carefully to each other, are truthful with each other, believe each other, comfort and encourage each other, and try hard to help each other feel good about himself/herself. For some of us, the bad things that happened to us are so strong in our memories that they seem only like yesterday when they actually happened a surprisingly long time ago and many good things have happened since. We will not have to suffer from the bad memories and distress for all of our lives. These things will slowly fade in our memories and life will get better and better. Finding the Best Friend Our lives are far more valuable than we had thought and we are headed for good things. We had bad people in our lives who claimed to be right but were cruel and nasty. There were some others who genuinely tried to help us but they still ended up letting us down. Not everyone is like that, however. There are some good people in this world, even though they can sometimes be hard to find. Nevertheless, humans are not perfect. We need a friend who will never, ever hurt or disappoint us or make a mistake or not fully understand us or not always like us or not always be available when we need a friend. The only person like that is not human. He is God. Because he is God and not human, he is not sexual and he is utterly selfless. Many people lie about God, saying awful things about him that are totally false. Sometimes evil spirits pretend to be God or his Son Jesus. The real God, however, is good and kind and thinks highly of you and of the rest of us. He is gentle and patient and forgiving. He never tricks us nor forces us to do things. He never touches us in a bad way. Anyone claiming to be God or Jesus who is not like that is bluffing. Such a being is a fake and we can totally ignore him. Moreover, because the real God is on our side, we can order any such deceiver to leave. People have blamed us for things, and we have blamed ourselves for things, but despite what people might say, God does not blame us at all. And the exciting thing is that God is the Judge of all the world. What he says is right and his opinion of us will stand for all eternity. Anyone who disagrees with him will be proved wrong. Rather than let us be blamed, the Son of God cares for us so deeply that he came to earth so that he could take upon himself all of our blame and shame and suffer all the punishment and disgrace that we and others think we deserve. The punishment was so torturous and he absorbed it so fully that it killed him. Nevertheless, he suffered it willingly so that we could be made totally innocent and blameless in God’s eyes. It seems far too good to be true but we have discovered that Jesus is so amazingly good that it is absolutely true. So although we do not always realize it, all our shame and blame has totally gone because of Jesus. And because he himself was totally innocent, he was able to come back to life again after fully extinguishing all our blame and punishment. He considers all his suffering worth it when we no longer blame ourselves and no longer believe that we are guilty or think that we still deserve to be punished. He likes us so much that when we are happy, it makes him really happy and when we feel sad, it makes him feel sad. He is the best friend anyone could ever have and he would love to be your friend, just as he is my friend. It will be a slow process but all of us will end up finding life enjoyable and fulfilling and we will be a blessing to God. Many people will spend eternity thanking us for the great help we have been to them. It might not seem that way at present, but it will happen. Sharing the Same Body We all share the same body. So if any of us killed himself/herself, it would kill us all, and if anyone hurt the body, it would hurt us all. It will take a while, but you will end up feeling better, and those of us who are already beginning to feel better do not want to die or have our body hurt. So we beg you, for their sake, don’t hurt yourself, even when the urge to do so is strong. There are much better ways of ending your distress than hurting yourself. These ways might take a while to work but you will end up really happy that you chose them rather than hurting yourself. Even baby parts who cannot even talk can learn in a matter of weeks not only how to talk but to read and write, but even if they still play with children’s toys, they can develop skills that not even adult parts can equal. So you are now part of a team of highly capable parts and some of them are quickly becoming even more capable. You are no longer in the scary situation where everything depends solely on you. So you can at last relax. You are surrounded by parts who are keen to support you and ensure your safety. Even more amazing and reassuring is that God, who never needs to rest, is forever looking after us, every moment day and night and if there is anything we need to be aware of when we are sleeping or distracted, he will alert us the instant we need to know. Keeping Safe It is of extreme importance that all of us – you and all the other parts of you – always make good decisions that end up being in your best interest and keep you safe. The danger, however, is that no one, no matter how intelligent, caring and capable, can be sure of making safe decisions without knowing all the relevant facts. You are of extreme importance in deciding what should be done because you know things that no one else knows. Your other parts need you. Each of your other parts, however, are equally important because they know things that you don’t. This is because you and each of your other parts have had times when you were asleep or in hiding, when other parts of you were actively observing or learning or doing things of great significance in deciding the best course of action. There are a million possibilities, but here’s one example. An alter who is active most of the time might have been ‘protected’ by another part from unpleasant information about her parents. She believes her parents are safe but another part of her knows that her father regularly attacked her. Without her knowing this about her father, it could be highly dangerous for her to make the decision to visit her parents, spending several nights in their home. [Vicki and Grantley, the authors of this webpage, have had friends who have ended up suffering horribly because of such a decision.] On the other hand, another part might be horrified about her making this decision and doesn’t know how to gently persuade her. So in utter desperation, this part does something harmful to the body in order to try to prevent the trip to the parents. This could cause needless suffering if the alter taking this desperate action did not realize that it is safe to go home because the father has died. Such a situation is common, as parts are often totally unaware that, for them, time has flown because they had been unconscious for many years while one or more other parts were getting on with life. To keep oneself safe, every part of you needs to meet each other and share what each of you knows. Only then will you be able to piece together all the facts that will empower you to choose the safest and wisest course of action in each situation you face. Any sharing of information will be invaluable, but it is almost impossible to be certain that there are no other parts of you with critical information who have so far remained in hiding. Even when every part has fully shared, however, there is still someone who knows even more. No, it is not a counselor. The one who knows absolutely everything in the entire universe is God. And he alone has infinite intelligence. Anyone who has him as a friend has an enormous advantage. If you are afraid of him or don’t have him as a friend, we will not force you in any way, but there is no need for that situation to continue. Have you had people say bad things about you that are not true? Well people treat God that way all the time. He is actually the best and safest friend anyone could ever have and, despite what you might imagine, he thinks the world of you. Even if you struggle with that at present, you have some parts who have made this discovery and are friends with God. So if those parts have heard from God on a matter, that is immense wisdom that you can benefit from. Meetings We have meetings, where all parts get together and discuss important decisions, and so on. You, along with all parts get to fully explain your views and wishes and when everyone has shared their insight into the matter, you and the rest of us get to vote on it. We all agree to follow whatever decision wins the majority vote. Agreement is important because we all live in the same body. United we stand; divided we stumble. [Note to the more experienced part: if what is described in the following paragraph has not yet occurred, I strongly suggest that you let it happen because God deeply wants it and you will all greatly benefit from it.] One day, God offered us the incredible privilege of letting him be a part of us. Some of us saw immediately what an astounding opportunity it was. We would have access to all his unlimited kindness, knowledge and help. Others of us were worried about what it might mean. We discussed it in depth with each other, voicing hopes and fears about this momentous decision. Finally we decided to put it to a vote, agreeing – as always – that we would all abide by the decision of the majority. God won the vote. Even those who originally voted against having God as one of our parts now agree that it was the smartest decision we have ever made. God never forces us. He simply discusses things with us and votes on them just like any other part. He encourages us, laughs at our jokes, answers our questions and makes us feel so much better. If we disagree with each other on anything, we go to him to sort it out. We can trust his decision because he likes each of us equally. He is totally fair and he is the smartest person in the universe. Making Life Easier and Better When parts of a person know much about each other, they become warm, wonderful friends who help and support each other and have lots of safe fun together. When they know very little, however, a few parts that some people have, can seem nasty. They have a good, kind heart but having been cut off from important information sometimes forces them to take drastic action in a desperate attempt to protect themselves and others. We mentioned an example of this with someone’s part who believed they were about to be exposed to immense danger by returning to the parent’s house. This part sincerely believed there was no other way to stay safe other than take drastic action. When a part learns more of the facts and learns how to more gently and more persuasively help other parts not make dangerous decisions, everything calms right down. It is far easier to ask a friend to do something for you than to try to convince an enemy or someone you have been nasty to. People trust and believe friends, not someone who threatens them. So becoming friends with your parts not only makes life much more enjoyable and safer, it actually helps you get your own way. All of us agree to be nice to each other. If a part mistakenly thinks that hurting us will keep us safe or some such thing, we discuss it with the part, helping him or her to understand. [When convenient, it would be helpful to provide to this part of you with a timeline of significant events in your life, both good and bad, such as abuse, education, marriage, family, and so on, along with photos and mementoes and a map showing where you have lived and how far away you now live in relation to everything that has happened in the past.] An Amazing Way to Fast-Track Healing Christine initially found it highly traumatic and confusing whenever a new alter emerged (i.e. whenever a part of her we had not previously been aware of revealed herself). As already hinted, in addition to Christine’s distress as each alter’s pain and turmoil washed over her, I found it frustrating and time consuming that since newly surfaced alters had no awareness of all that Christine had learned about D.I.D., I had to laboriously explain to each of them all over again what D.I.D. is, how good and safe and kind and trustworthy Jesus is, all that has happened in Christine’s life that they are not aware of, plus how to access all the skills and knowledge each alter has, and so on. Eventually, however, when still more alters first revealed themselves it was no longer traumatic, I was not needed at all, and they learned all they needed amazingly quickly and almost effortlessly. The key to this transformation was that Christine had developed a way for alters to quickly access all the information they needed to heal and to become fully functional and to know everything about current circumstances and what other alters had experienced in the past. By all means, modify Christine’s method in whatever way best suits you, but basically what makes possible this quick transference of information begins with creating a pleasant place in your mind that is fully accessible to every alter, even to alters you are not currently aware of. Use your powerful imagination to adjust lighting, room temperature, background music, furnishings and spaciousness to whatever is most comforting and relaxing for you. Should it be outdoors? Should it be surrounded by an impenetrable wall with a secure door that only alters can access? Should there be flowers, stuffed toys, friendly animals, water features? This is your place, so make it special. Should, however, an alter later appear who feels uncomfortable about some aspect of it, change it however needed to best suit the newcomer. In this cozy haven you have used your imagination to fashion, create a large video library or memory bank or filing system (however you like to think of it) stored with all sorts of memories and information accumulated by each alter. Not only can sights, sounds, smells and facts be stored but also the emotions felt when each event occurred. If alters wish, they can actually merge their minds with these memories so that the memories remain as real for them as it is for the alter who originally experienced them. That way, for example, if an alter is asleep when others have a nice day, the alter can catch up and miss out on nothing. What you are creating in your mind is primarily a place of comfort and learning that will bring relief and empowerment to alters. It is a safe place where each alter has complete control over what he/she learns. Both good memories and bad ones should be stored there and alters can sample them at whatever speed best suits them. Pleasant memories are very valuable because trauma tends to distort things so that the good is not enjoyed or even noticed nearly as much as it should. The result is an unjustifiably negative view of life that can leave a person needlessly fearful or pessimistic and can even sap him/her of the will to live. The stockpile of good memories helps restore the balance. Distressing memories are also astonishingly valuable. They are a vital key to understanding one’s roots and critical to finally finding peace, healing and wholeness. How can anyone resolve perplexing issues that one remains unaware of? Moreover, secrets (such as alters hiding scary memories from each other) keep people fractured. Alters keeping secrets from each other create no-go zones in one’s brain. Such secrets put a wall between alters, preventing them from accessing each other’s intellectual potential. Alters should not be pressured to visit unpleasant memories, however. And one of the features of the memory bank is that as each memory is accessed, it can be stopped whenever the alter wishes. Another empowering aspect of this system is that each alter is aware that what he/she is reviewing is not currently happening but that it is a past event that has a happy ending in that it has been survived and is now over. It is helpful for each alter to have Jesus present when viewing these memories because Jesus thoroughly knows both the alter and what happens next in the memory. So he knows precisely when it is best for the alter to take a break. Unpleasant memories should be categorized according to how unpleasant they are. Some might be labeled, “Not to be viewed alone,” meaning they should be viewed only when the alter has the comforting support of another alter being present. What typically motivates alters to access bad memories of what another alter suffered is their eagerness to break the isolation felt by the alter who originally experienced it and to offer comfort and support. Love, such as acting out of love for another alter, is empowering and healing not just for the recipient but especially for the one who loves. The memory bank can also be a place for storing creative ideas, including stories, music and imaginary things that help alters relax. Some alters might like to store lists about themselves, such as the top three things they love, the top three things they hate, the top three things they want all the others to know them for and the top three things they don’t want to be known for. This allows a new alter to immediately find common ground with one or more other alters and to start bonding with them, thus helping them feel less isolated and more understood and more able to find the support and guidance they need. It is good to develop a buddy system where a more experienced alter helps out a newer one. It can also be good for alters with a different mix of strengths and weaknesses to pair up so that the weaknesses of each are offset by the strengths of the other. Since some alters are particularly good at helping new alters adjust, information identifying these alters could also be included. You might find it helpful to have a section of the library where basic information new alters need is outlined and from there they can access more details as required. Do this even if you are convinced that every alter has been discovered, because no matter how sure you feel, it is still possible that another will emerge. With practice, each alter will master the ability to speed up the viewing process so that information is able to be absorbed even faster. If, for example, you know a second language, or an alter is too young to know any language, this system will allow the alter to gain the ability to speak a whole new language astonishingly fast. The same applies to other skills that would otherwise take years to learn. Eventually, one alter is likely to discover that he/she is particularly good at organizing this information so that it can be easily located. The memory bank can be added to daily or even minute by minute so that short term memory is readily accessible as well as long term memory. I considered that the goal should be to store absolutely everything in different sections of this one place. To my surprise, however, Christine still kept suffering the frustration of misplacing keys, cell phone, important documents, and so on. Often an alter had deliberately stored them somewhere ‘safe’ (i.e. where she believed they would not be lost) but when they were urgently needed, that alter – and it could be any of several – happened to be asleep. Christine explained that because the memory bank held not only good memories but highly disturbing ones, it was best kept in a cozy, tranquil area that helped alters feel as secure and relaxed as possible. Yes, it was stressful frantically hunting for urgently needed items but she considered that keeping the area around her memory bank a place of serenity was too important to let it be spoiled by agitated alters bursting in to look for information before, for example, rushing off to work. Eventually, Christine decided to create an area quite separate from the memory bank. She visualized it as a notice board on which alters pinned notes indicating where they had placed various items. Its success hinged on every alter getting into the habit of using the board but it proved most helpful. Like riding a bike, playing a piano or any other skill, creating a memory bank takes time to perfect but practice will pay off. Eventually, it will become not only a way to speed up healing but very empowering; enabling you to be more in control of your life, better organized, less confused, less disabled if a key alter goes into hiding, and so on. For more information about developing these skills, see the How to Cure Dissociative Identity Disorder link at the end of this page. Are you curious as to why the above actually works? It is employing your ability to visualize things to help you better organize all your memories of experiences and things learned so that they are easier to locate. It also allows you to create a visual representation of parts of you being able to access information stored in the brain that had previously been off-limits to those parts. Whereas, in the past, fear had prevented you from doing this, the above is giving yourself permission to create new neural pathways that connect parts of the brain that had previously had little or no connection. The exciting result is a multiplication of one’s mental capacity. It is like creating a supercomputer by connecting individual computers, each of which has valuable data and capacity. Not having access to certain parts of one’s brain is a serious handicap. It is almost like part of you being cut off from the ability to see, another part being cut off from the ability to hear, and so on. There is a positive side, however. When a man cannot see, he has to compensate by developing his ability to use his other senses beyond what average people can do. Similarly, I believe that alters have been forced to compensate for being disconnected by maximizing their limited capacity and by replicating abilities that other parts have already developed. As a result, the total capacity of the brain is greater than that of average people but the actual extent of this intellectual superiority cannot be fully manifested until all the isolated parts are connected. When that happens, the result is impressive. Conclusion We might have imagined that doing away with childish things speeds an alters’s growth but it can actually bring to a grinding halt not just the growth of one alter, but all healing. In fact, almost any decision made without an alter’s consent has the potential to be highly triggering and often cause pain, resentment, and withdrawal, which will in turn keep a person’s mind divided against itself. You’re a leader, not a loner. It might be frustrating to have to go slow for the sake of the others, but a general who charges off at his own pace is in for a rude shock when he encounters the enemy and looks behind to find himself alone because his army was unable to keep up with him. Together you are strong. Healing requires almost superhuman reserves of courage, love, patience, insight, and so on, but that’s okay because through Jesus you have access to all that you need. Link mentioned above: How to Find Every Alter & Get Each Alter to Talk How to Cure Dissociative Identity Disorder (About creating an internal world that speeds healing.) - Link coming soon

Dissociative Identity Disorder & God About the Author I’m no more special than anyone else, but if you are curious as to who is behind these webpages, you have every right to know. Also, though perhaps it might increase my status in the eyes of some for them to mistakenly presume I am a counselor or therapist, truth is far too important to me to allow this. So I am keen to take this opportunity to stress that I am neither. Although this webpage is in a folder that uses those terms, they appear solely because a few people might use them when groping for words to type into a search engine, in a desperate attempt to locate the encouragement found here. I believe what I have to offer is the ability to demystify confusing topics and to devote my life to making information freely available, rather than reserving it for individuals spoken to one on one, or for those who pay. My efforts are solely to supplement, not supplant, therapists and counselors. Perhaps precisely because I do not have Dissociative Identity Disorder myself, I greatly admire people who do. Sadly, their battered self-esteem keeps them from seeing it, but they are truly remarkable people who have suffered appallingly – almost always significantly more than they realize – and yet, despite all the odds, they have battled on and achieved far beyond what average people knowing their full situation would ever imagine. Moreover, as they continue to heal, they will discover their exciting potential to achieve astonishingly more. I deserve no credit for thinking highly of people with Dissociative Identity Disorder. I believe anyone with an open mind would come to the same conclusion if, like me, they have the immense privilege of getting to truly know people with this condition. I happen to have qualified academically as a psychologist, having graduated after four years’ study at university and then undergoing another six months in the field. As far as I recall, however, in my particular course, not once was Dissociative Identity Disorder mentioned and I never heard of it until very many years later. I read a couple of paragraphs about introject alters before actually meeting this particular type of alter. Beside this, however, everything I have ever learned about Dissociative Identity Disorder has not come from the discoveries of therapists, nor theories of researchers, but from what I have learned through vast numbers of people with Dissociative Identity Disorder pouring out their hearts to me and through my personal encounters with literally many hundreds of alters. Even more significantly, what I have learned has come through continually looking to God, humbly sitting at my Master’s feet and observing in awe how Jesus loves alters and so tenderly and patiently relates to them and heals them. I’ve found more power in God, than psychology can ever tap into. I’m so convinced of this that, whilst maintaining a love for the science, I’ve left psychology to others. Instead, I got a low paid, degrading job to support myself while I devoted my life to the best I could hope for, which is, ultimately, to encourage people to discover the greatest of all therapists. To leave God out of my webpages might make them more popular and give me an excuse for making money but it would be as irresponsible as having the cure for AIDS and keeping it secret. As much as I ache for others to be aware of people’s plight, what’s the point of highlighting problems and ignoring the solution? My passion is that deeply wounded people be healed, and life is too short to settle for superficial cures. I’d rather be impoverished than make money out of people’s pain. Professionals have every right to charge but I’m no professional. They deserve to be compensated for all their training, but I’m not using my university training. So I don’t even ask for donations and I have almost always refused the few who have offered. I’m of no consequence. No one needs me. Everyone needs God. Nevertheless, I very much understand people shrinking in horror at the very mention of God. The inescapable fact is that atrocious things have been done in God’s name. If that infuriates us, imagine if there really were a loving God, what this would do to him. How would you feel if someone stole your identity so that millions accused you of hideous crimes that appalled you? Paedophiles rarely look dangerous. They prefer to take on respected community roles to win trust and obtain victims. Sadly, this sheds undue suspicion on good people and turns many off becoming teachers, scout leaders, and so on. Abusers often use the word love to try to justify their unloving acts and manipulate their victims. This can leave some victims so cruelly confused that even into adulthood the word love terrifies them. It is likewise common for abusers to use the word God to try to justify their ungodly behavior and manipulate the vulnerable. Victims are often left terrified of God. Abuse, whether emotional, physical or sexual, was not only awful when it happened; unless we heal, it can hold us back for the rest of our lives. And what would be particularly tragic is if bad past experiences cause us to shun the very thing that can heal us. It is not uncommon for pain to drive us to lash out at those we need the most. And, through no fault of our own, it’s so tragically normal for us to be blinded by pain. Abuse victims are often appallingly misunderstood. The same is true of the God who longs to heal them. It is common to malign the Almighty for letting people break his heart and his laws by doing disgusting things. He is often hated for not abusing his infinite power by instantly crushing those who do wrong. But he is the exact opposite of an abuser. Dismiss God as an unscientific figment of a weak mind. Or convince yourself that he is aloof, cold-hearted, even monstrous; the fact remains that God is actually warm, tender-hearted and cares passionately about even the least, most despised of us. He feels your pain like a knife in his own heart. He longs to not accuse or condemn but comfort, support, encourage and heal. I plead with everyone who might have Dissociative Identity Disorder to avail themselves of a good therapist or counselor. Ultimately, God needs no-one. He loves partnering with people, however, because he loves people. Nonetheless, God remains by far the greatest of all therapists. Grantley Morris Back to Index of Help for Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder)

How to Find Every Alter & How Get Each Alter to Talk Help When You Have Little Or No Contact With Certain Alters The following is important to everyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder: from those who are certain they thoroughly know their every alter, right through to those in the frustrating position of being unable to contact any of their alters. This webpage was originally crafted specifically for those in the latter extreme, so if you currently know none of your alters, this webpage will help change that. My goal, however, is not just to get you started but to help you keep the momentum going. It is so common that it might even be the norm for people not to know they have alters until they are middle-aged or even in their seventies. This makes perfect sense, since the main reason for Dissociative Identity Disorder is to keep secrets from oneself. You will spend most of your healing journey knowing some of your alters and needing to know still more. So please do not despise those parts of the webpage – especially the early sections – that assume you already know some alters. Later parts of the webpage will help you with the basics. From the moment you contact your first alter, however, those sections that currently seem advanced will quickly become relevant. I seek not just to give you some methods and then expect you to mindlessly follow them. I want to empower you with a deep understanding of what makes alters reluctant to reveal themselves so that you will be able to apply your own intelligence and skills to this challenge. The first part of this webpage is designed to motivate you to find alters but if you wish to start with how to find them, skip to Ways of Discovering New Alters . Don’t Presume to have Discovered All Your Alters It is much harder to find if you don’t seek. If you have been on the healing journey for quite some time, a very common reason for not seeking is thinking that you have already discovered your every alter. Once alters start revealing themselves, it is typical for them to appear one after another in fairly quick succession, and then go for weeks or months with no more new ones appearing. This pattern is likely to lull you into the presumption that there simply are no more alters. You are quite likely to reach this mistaken conclusion dozens of times before your every alter has revealed himself/herself. Other than rare, supernatural revelation, I know of no way anyone can be sure if every alter has surfaced. Understand How Critical it is to Find Your Every Alter Since one of the biggest hindrances to finding new alters is simply having little desire to find them, let’s briefly examine from three different angles what makes finding every alter so vital. 1. The Positive Benefits of Befriending Every Alter If you let them heal, all of your alters, without exception, will end up being amazing friends and confidantes and helpers. They are the key to you finding peace and fulfillment and achievement. Only through helping them will you find the true end to guilt feelings, fear and inner pain. You might long to keep suppressed within you horrific memories and/or awareness of your current emotional reaction (such as fear, pain or shame) associated with those unhealed memories. For as long as a part of you has memories and/or emotional reactions that you have no access to, however, you will be unable to find true peace and healing. Unpleasant feelings will be nagging away at you just below the surface of your consciousness. And, alarmingly, you will be unable to access significant parts of your brain that store this information. Additionally, if you have an alter you have little interaction with, those parts of your brain that you have lost access to almost certainly hold not just memories and emotions you would rather ignore but invaluable skills and intellectual abilities that will make life easier and more fulfilling than you dare hope. Of course, not everyone has every ability, but people with Dissociative Identity Disorder are likely to feel certain they do not have certain abilities and yet have those very abilities locked away in a part of their brain that is currently controlled by another alter. These abilities could already be quite developed but, if not, they can be developed at remarkable speed. I am not sure that you can grasp how passionately I wish I had a fraction of the potential for intellectual development found in people who are beginning to discover their alters. For me to not have Dissociative Identity Disorder but to know so many people who do, is like a starving person who cannot eat, acting as a waiter at a feast. I would be out of my skin with excitement if I discovered I had alters. The possibilities are almost limitless and will vary from person to person but the following are some examples that someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder might discover. By connecting with his or her alters, a person might end up with remarkably improved: * Eyesight * Manual dexterity * Ability to use the non-dominant hand * Surefootedness, such as ability to climb rugged terrain * Athletic ability * Short-term or long-term memory * Musical ability * Speed reading skills * Creative cooking * Mathematical ability * Direction finding and navigational skills * Ability to thoroughly enjoy marital relations * Grammar and spelling * Creative writing * A flair for public speaking * Sense of humor * Linguistic ability * Artistic ability * Dress sense * Parenting skills * Ability to handle stress * People skills * Freedom from certain phobias * Spiritual abilities such as spiritual warfare * Intimate experiences with God I have no idea which of the above list will apply to you but there are sure to be at least several. As exciting as this is, there is another aspect of discovering one’s alters that is even more exciting. A dear friend of mine did not discover he had D.I.D. until he was 70 years old. He calls finding alters ‘bringing them home’, and refers to his alters as his family. For most of his life, he had hardly cared whether he lived or died, and despite many friends he had felt isolated and lonely. Now, he not only suddenly feels alive, he finds himself having much to live for – his ‘family.’ They are so very precious to him and fulfill him in ways he had never dreamed possible. Also, as inevitably happens, discovering them has been like swiching on a light in a dark room, empowering him to made sense so many aspects of his life that had previously been mysteries to him. 2. Ending Your Alters’ Needless Torment For as long as you have one alter who remains hidden from you, part of you is in needless agony, even if you remain unaware of it or have grown so used to it that you cannot imagine the relief of it being over. Continual solitary confinement is a psychologically damaging form of torture and this is just the beginning of what an alter walled up inside you suffers. Alters cut off from your help are needlessly tormented by hopelessness, devastatingly low self-esteem, terror, horrific guilt and inner pain, as well as torturously starved of love and approval. Here is not the place to expand on this but an example is an alter terrified that the abuse could recommence at any moment, unaware that so many years have passed that not only has the abuse the completely stopped, the abuser is dead. Another example is an alter who fled into hiding when it seemed an abuser was about to chop off a vital part of his body. Thereafter, the alter was sure he was shamefully maimed; unaware that the abuser never carried out his threat. Just one more of countless other examples: it is common for alters to blame themselves and be riddled with horrific guilt, knowing nothing of the fact that Christ has totally cleansed them, making them spotlessly pure. Even if in some cases you lack the skills to bring an alter to full healing, you can at least introduce the alter to God (and perhaps a counselor/therapist) who can help tremendously. 3. The Scary Possible Consequences of Not Finding Alters Before mentioning some scary things that might not even apply to you, it is vital that you view them from the reality that if you really have D.I.D., you are already a master survivor who has kept winning against the odds without even the greatly increased resources that will be yours through putting this webpage into practice . People have put you down for most of your life, leaving you with such battered self-esteem that this alone is enough to cause you to woefully underrate how intelligent and capable you really are. This appalling underrating of your capabilities, however, is made many times worse if you are not aware of all the survival stories and abilities of other parts of you. You have managed to survive devastating crises for years and years with parts of you having to cope, not merely alone, but cut off even from the help, maturity, wisdom, knowledge, abilities and encouragement of the rest of you. You do not have to fear the full truth. It will simply empower you to pour additional help and resources into parts of you that have already survived. With your help, these parts of you will not merely survive but will begin to thrive. No matter what you face in the future, the worst is already behind you because never before have you had such maturity, spiritual resources and the ability to draw upon the skills, knowledge and understanding that have been locked up in other parts of you. No one, no matter how capable, can be sure of making smart and safe decisions without knowing all the relevant facts. Whether you realize it or not, there are facts that will remain hidden from you unless you connect with every alter that is currently hidden inside you. No one knows how vital these facts are to your welfare until all your alters reveal themselves and fully share all they know. I have met very many people who have ended up exceedingly sorry they had not tried harder and much earlier to get to know their every alter. They could have been spared much heartache. It is with great reluctance that I alert you to the magnitude of the very real dangers of not connecting with all your alters. You have more than enough stress without me adding to it, but it would be irresponsible of me not to warn you of what could be at stake. Picture several infants and young children who have access to guns they do not know are loaded. You are unable to physically touch the children or the guns. So you cannot prevent them from pointing the guns at family members and strangers and playing with the trigger. All you can do is coax and train them to leave the guns alone. It is no exaggeration to say it is equally as dangerous not to do everything you can to discover and interact with every one of your alters. It is not at all that your alters are evil; they simply lack your understanding. Now that you know this, however, to remain willfully ignorant and not seek out every last one of your alters is irresponsible and would render you accountable for any disasters that result. Alters are ordinary people (frequently with only the understanding of little children) cut off from vital information and subjected to mind-numbingly horrific situations. Think of normal little children who have been fed lies and are beside themselves with pain, terror, confusion and hopelessness. These darlings have not only been cut off from almost all that you know about life and God but have been tricked, groomed, manipulated and even brainwashed by someone terrifyingly evil. Despite having surprisingly good intentions, such confused and traumatized alters could unwittingly cause you enormous distress. A huge range of alarming things could be happening without your knowledge. Here are a few real-life examples: * You would never let yourself be driven around town by a five- year-old and yet an alter with no more ability could end up driving your car in dangerous traffic with your loved ones in it. * You would never let an eight-year-old child have access to your credit card and yet you could have an alter who sees the world as an eight-year-old does and has worked out how to use your credit card. * You could be confidently allowing someone access to you or your children, unaware that another part of you knows for sure that this person is a dangerous predator. * It is very common for people with D.I.D. to end up with a reputation for lying because, in their ignorance of their alter’s actions, they adamantly deny doing something that other people witnessed them doing. * You might be desperate to break an addiction and have no idea that a part of you has no understanding of the value of quitting and is sabotaging your efforts. Or you could have eating disorders you are unaware of, causing you to whack on weight through binging or to dangerously deplete your body through bulimia. * I have not encountered it in counseling but it seems quite likely that one could end up arrested for shoplifting because of the forgetfulness, ignorance or desperation of an alter. * Undesirable and even life-threatening things can happen when parts of a person are unaware of his or her current bodily limitations. The following example might be extreme but it illustrates just how out of touch parts of a person can be. A friend of mine had little alters who got so furious at me that they said they hated me (when they had previously liked me) because I suggested that their body was not well enough for them to risk playing in the snow. She had at the time a body temperature of 104 (40 degrees Celsius), was coughing, had suspected pneumonia, a kidney infection, viral infection, serious stomach infection, ulcers, gastritis and cancer. Just the day before, her parts had thought they had a nimble light-weight body that could climb a tall tree to rescue their cat. They came crashing to the ground. The day before that, she had rushed into a burning building and had to be hospitalized for smoke inhalation. I know this string of events seems unbelievable, but just the day before that she almost drowned in a large, deep lake when the air temperature was 22 degrees (-5.5 Celsius) with a wind chill of 14 (-10 Celsius). * Although I am about to mention some even more unsettling things about Dissociative Identity Disorder, please be comforted by the assurance that not only do these issues not apply to everyone with D.I.D., they are possible only until key alters are discovered, befriended and introduced to Jesus. Until these connections are made, 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 yearning 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 had no idea she 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 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. Similar situations can involve child abuse, squandering money, chemical abuse, or self-harm. Some devout Christians have alters they know nothing of who literally worship Satan or befriend demons. Some alters can be committed to ensuring a person fails at everything he or she attempts. 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 to distract the person from the temptation, rather than dwelling on it. 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. How Despicable Alters Can Easily Change You will lack the motivation to find alters if you fail to understand how easily alters who are currently acting despicably can be transformed into beautiful friends and helpers who make you proud. Alters respond amazingly to unconditional love and approval. They will do almost anything to please you, once they sense that they can find in you the unconditional love they crave. On the other hand, it is virtually impossible to win over any alter that you continue to hate. Love transforms. Hate and suspicion breed hate and suspicion. Scripture reminds us that we love only because God first loved us (1 John 4:19). As God transformed us by taking the initiative in loving us while we were sinners, so we must follow his lead in loving alters before they become Christlike. 1 Corinthians 13 says that love believes all things or, as some versions put it, love thinks the best of a person. Once we get to know and understand alters it becomes easy to see them as misguided and by no means irredeemably evil. You will most likely discover an alter for whom this initially seems impossible to believe, so I should provide you with a few examples of what motivates alters. * An alter might cruelly enforce a former abuser’s rules, such as harshly punishing any alter who reveals details about past abuse. Usually, this is because the alter mistakenly believes the abuser still has full access to you. This misunderstanding leaves the alter terrified that if any part of you breaches the abuser’s rules, the abuser will do to you worse things than the alter inflicted when he tried to get you to avoid the abuser’s wrath. * An alter might be filled with hate and anger solely because he or she believes that maintaining this front is the only way to scare off potential abusers and so keep you safe. * It is not uncommon for alters to convince themselves that they are the opposite sex. If you have such alters, it is not because they are homosexual but because they have a desperate need to feel safe, and their experience has led them to presume that being the opposite sex will lessen their likelihood of being abused. Once they understand that they can be their real gender and be safe because they are no longer helpless children whom authorities would not believe, but are in the strong body of an adult, it becomes easier for them to accept their gender and they will eventually begin to enjoy their real identity. * Without your love and an awareness of God’s love for them, some alters might feel so useless and unwanted that they grow so desperate as to be willing to trade sexual favors for someone’s shallow pretense of love and approval. Abusers frequently convince their victims that they have no other value and no other chance of ‘love’ except through sex. Having been repeatedly forced to have sex against their will, it is also not uncommon for alters to try to cope with this almost intolerable situation by doing their utmost to convince themselves that they like the illicit sex that they actually despise. This webpage is not the place to keep piling on more examples but the above should suffice to help you understand why it turns out that alters are not only capable of totally changing, but they are usually eager to do so, once they realize that they have been acting under a false presumption. Don’t Leave it to a Counselor/Therapist Some counselors/therapists refuse to converse with alters and focus exclusively on the host (the part of a person who most often interacts with the outside world). Having spoken to many alters who feel deeply hurt by this approach, I don’t recommend it. This approach to counseling usually leaves alters feeling ignored, rejected, unimportant, and sometimes even less than human. Abuse typically creates these same feelings, so the last thing you need is for a counselor/therapist to unwittingly add to this deep wounding. On the other hand, if you or your partner were undergoing marriage counseling, it would be a total failure if your partner fell in love with the counselor or ended up ignoring you and sharing exclusively with the counselor. Likewise, you do not want your alters to prefer speaking to a counselor rather than with you. Let’s put it another way: alters are a vital part of you. They hold the key to your past and to you achieving your full intellectual, emotional, vocational and spiritual potential. If a spinal cord injury caused a part of you – your legs – to no longer respond to messages from your brain, healing is not about a counselor/therapist learning how to get that part of you to respond to messages from his brain. They are your legs and healing hinges on you learning how to walk with them. So it is with your alters. Sometimes a counselor/therapist might initiate contact with an alter but you need to strive to catch up and become your alter’s best friend and confidante. Whether you connect with your alters is largely up to you, not your counselor/therapist. You can, however, ask your counselor/therapist to help you by encouraging your alters to feel positively about you and by keeping you informed about your alters, as much as your alters will allow. The Story So Far Little children naturally believe whatever older children – and especially significant adults in their lives – insist is true. Are you certain only highly moral and trustworthy people had access to you during your most vulnerable, impressionable years? Unless you had such a protected life, it is very possible that there are parts of you that you have not yet met who accept as unshakable truth put-downs and dangerous or even perverted lies maliciously fed to you at a time when you lacked the maturity to see through the lies. Through befriending and understanding your alters, even the most confused and brainwashed of them can find peace and change so profoundly as to make you proud. There is no such guarantee, however, for any who are left to flounder without any input from your maturity and insight. No matter how awful facing suppressed memories is, there is always something worse: not facing them. D.I.D. is like curable cancer. Get it treated and you will be fine. Ignore it and you might get away with it for a long while but eventually, the consequences of procrastinating will be bitter indeed. An ignored alter, reeling in pain and confusion, could end up causing you to lose your job, sabotage valued relationships, commit adultery, accidentally or deliberately kill you or even murder someone. As I have stressed, certain alters have the potential to act this way, not because they are evil, but simply because, without your help, they are alarmingly confused. Such alters have my full sympathy and understanding. Whether the law or your loved ones would be so understanding, however, is a very different matter. You need to intervene as quickly as possible. Within the same person, and from person to person, alters differ significantly. Not all alters will be so potentially dangerous if kept cut off from you, but until discovering each one, you will never know how suicidal and misguided a lost part of you is. Like cancer, problems do not disappear by pretending or hoping they do not exist. All they do is get more serious and prolong your distress. When ignored, some alters are not only your most valuable neglected assets, they are a ticking time bomb that could blow your world apart. By connecting with them, you will end up rendering them not only safe but a beautiful source of comfort and support to you and an astounding intellectual, spiritual, social and emotional boost. God is eager to restore every part of you to sweetness and innocence. Nevertheless, the Almighty, being the extreme opposite of an abuser, will not force himself on any part of you. Out of the infinite integrity of his heart, he will keep restraining his yearning to intervene until that part of you willingly gives him permission. Helping an alter reach that point of trusting God is likely to require your cooperation. Ways of Discovering New Alters Tune in to Your Feelings If you are feeling anything that seems peculiar because it does not line up with your current circumstances or thoughts, it could be because an alter is active. The feeling might be fear, sadness, hopelessness, anger, self-hate, isolation, loneliness, bitterness, frustration, excitement, wonder, or whatever but if, under the circumstances, it seems at odds with what you would expect, the feeling could be washing over you from an alter. I can only provide a few examples from a vast range of other possible clues to the unannounced presence of an alter. You are unlikely to experience more than one or two of them. Just remain alert for such things. You might suddenly feel out of place. You might feel small, or everything around you might seem unfamiliar. You might even get lost for no obvious reason. You might feel disconnected from yourself or even hardly recognize yourself in the mirror. You might even find yourself unable to walk, or unable to control bodily functions, or crave a pacifier or a toy or something else inappropriate for adults, or simply desire for a particular food or something else that you usually have little or no desire for. Or you might feel ill at ease about something that would not normally bother you. It is important not to get impatient with yourself or to tell yourself you are stupid for having such a feeling. Instead, if anything like this happens, it is an ideal time to try to make contact with an alter. Proceed on the assumption that what you are feeling is emanating from an alter who is currently close to the surface and able to hear you. If you happen to be writing at the time, then write to the alter. Otherwise, tenderly and reassuringly speak to the alter – out loud if circumstances permit – using the feeling as a guide to what the alter most needs to hear. For example, if you are safe but feel timid or fearful, say such things as, “It’s okay, dear one, you are safe now. The scary things have come to an end. How can I help you feel safe? Can you tell me a little about why you are afraid?” Using words that little children can understand could be helpful in case the alter only has a child’s vocabulary. If the feeling you are picking up is one of confusion or of being small, it could be because the alter has been inside for years longer than he/she realizes and present-day reality is very different to what the alter expects. Say such things as, “It’s okay, you have just been asleep for years but you are safe. Things are different because life is much better than it used to be. Would you let me be your friend?” Even if you receive no reply, continue to softly chat for a while. If you receive no response and the feeling that made you wonder if an alter were present suddenly goes, it could be that the alter has fled back into hiding to try to come to terms with what he/she has just learned and will come out again a little later. Note Your Inner Talk A friend who has Dissociative Identity Disorder gives this suggestion for becoming aware of alters: Pay special, sensitive attention to things you might have thought were just ordinary. When I sensed a baby crying in the back of my mind, for example, I thought I was just tired. Or when I heard a little song repeating itself in my thoughts, like something a child would sing, I again thought at first that it was just normal background noise. You might occasionally hear a sentence or two spoken in your mind that seems out of place. For example, you might be feeling content and suddenly hear in your mind, “I wish I were dead.” You might not be surprised by such events. After all, if you have D.I.D. you have lived with alters for most of your life, even if you have dismissed them. From now on, however, be on the alert for any such times and treat them as opportunities to attempt contact with alters. The Surprising Power of Journaling Please remember that I include in this term not just writing but audio or video messages, and that some alters can understand spoken words but cannot read. Keeping a journal is an excellent way to make contact with alters, and an invaluable way to come to grips with deep issues in one’s life. Let’s begin by listing some of the benefits: * Like working on a jigsaw, a journal can bring together all possible clues about forgotten events and what might be troubling you. Moreover, even without the memory problems commonly associated with D.I.D., some clues – such as fleeting thoughts and dreams – are, by their very nature, quickly forgotten unless almost instantly recorded. * A journal is insurance against losing valuable information. At almost any moment, the host or other alters might suddenly be triggered or overwhelmed and retreat to some inaccessible place deep within, taking their knowledge with them. This means that unless you are quite advanced in your healing you can alarmingly lose all memory of things you would never expect to forget until that part of you resurfaces. Of course, included in what could possibly be lost for who knows how long is all the information you have been painstakingly accumulating about alters and clues about your past. * Alters themselves might end up reading and contributing to your journal. * A journal might even move beyond rare entries by an elusive alter to becoming like a message pad or communication device, allowing you to chat back and forth with one or more alters. This might involve a time delay, and such a delay can sometimes not only be advantageous but the only option for meaningful communication. One of the two reasons for this is easily understood: certain alters might usually be asleep when you are awake, and active when you ‘lose time’ or are asleep (I will explore this a little more, later). I would like right now, however, to spend a little more time explaining the other possibility: “When alters are with me, I am overwhelmed with severe anxiety, sadness and turmoil,” complained a woman when detailing why she was making so little progress in speaking with her alters. “What you feel at such times is a normal consequence of Dissociative Identity Disorder,” I replied sympathetically. “When alters are close, you feel their emotions and these dear parts of you are currently in such inner pain, fear and confusion as to be almost brain-numbing for anyone hit by the full intensity of these feelings. It’s no wonder that you find yourself unable to communicate at such times. One of the things making journaling so helpful is that it can let an alter express herself/himself and then withdraw, allowing you to later read the alter’s words and respond with a helpful message to the alter when you are more clear-headed.” Real-time communication with some alters might initially be so overwhelming as to be almost impossible. As this woman discovered, direct contact with some of your alters might expose you to an almost paralyzing awareness of their emotions, such as terror, feelings of intense guilt or shame, vivid memories of physical pain, and so on. These feelings are usually invalid, in the sense that you are likely to now be safe, the guilt or shame is often a trick of the mind in that the alter had no control over what happened, any physical wounds have now healed, and so on. Nevertheless, because the alter does not realize this, the feelings can be so devastating as to render you unable to think straight while the alter is close. By leaving messages, you can let the alter know that he or she is truly loved, valued, believed, forgiven, safe, and so on. Once convinced of this, the alter’s distress will ease so that the intensity of his/her feelings washing over you will likewise ease, eventually allowing you to communicate in real time. It was frustrating trying to help one woman because I should have been redundant. She already had a therapist and counselor infinitely superior to me: Jesus. She heard from him clearly and he regularly revealed to her important things about her alters. I, on the other hand, kept making blunders and needlessly upsetting her alters because for me to understand her past and her alters’ sensitivities and beliefs half as well as she already knew them, would take me months of getting to know her. I was needed only because she found herself unable to think clearly when needy alters were present. (And they were particularly needy. Many, for example, were tormented by demons who pretended to be good and had fooled their victims into believing they could not cope without the demons.) Much of this dear woman’s dependence upon inferior human help vanished when she discovered the value of leaving messages for alters, and encouraging them to leave messages for her. Let’s move on to some helpful tips about journaling. Keep your journal private. You might at some time choose to share a small extract with a therapist, but essentially it is for your eyes only. Even if you trust your partner, you might later discover a part who has not reached this level of trust. Secrecy inspires honesty. And God loves honesty. He is not afraid of truth nor surprised about your deepest doubts and concerns. So let go of inhibitions and pour out your heart – your feelings, your fears, frustrations, suspicions, childhood memories, how you feel about family members, and so on. Whether it comes in drips or gushes, don’t evaluate its accuracy or in any way analyze it – you can do that another time. Abandon attempts to correct it grammatically. Just let it flow. Don’t even censor language or anger or even blasphemies that offend your Christian sensitivities. Understand that rather than trying to force alters to act as if they were Christian, the most powerful thing you can do spiritually is to tap the depths of their depravity so that eventually you can gently lift them up to Jesus. Your mission must be to help them fall in love with Jesus so that they end up so spiritually transformed that they want to delight God. Trying to suppress or force or manipulate them will only hinder their spiritual advancement and, ultimately, your own. And for you to lead them to Jesus, you must first get to know and understand them and win their trust. And this is what journaling is all about. Include in your journal lots of questions you would like answered about God, your past, about why you do certain things, and so on. Also include regular indications that you would like alters’ feedback and contributions. As already mentioned, different alters are likely to be active at different times of the day or night and can be triggered by different events into hiding or becoming active. To make the most of this, try to journal at various times of the day and night and maintain this practice over a long period, preferably indefinitely. Keep the journal handy throughout the day, and especially by your bed at night. If you are reluctant to take it to work, that’s not too critical because shy alters are more likely to be active at other times. However, some thoughts could come to you when you are at work that are worth jotting down so that you can copy it into your journal later. Every now and then, read through all you have written. Even if you get no response, try discussing their content with alters. Some entries might use different (often more child-like) spelling and grammar to what you would normally use, or the content might surprise you. If handwritten, you might notice a different handwriting style. It might take months for anything significant to appear but keep it up. Try to make a copy of what you journal and store the copy elsewhere because it is quite possible that at some point an alter might destroy it in a cleaning spree or a moment of panic. Possibilities for creating a copy include photocopying, scanning or typing it into a computer and putting a copy on a USB (thumb) drive. Retain copies of such things as emails that you send, and treat them as additional sources of information. If you already have writings from the past – even if it is just such things as old e-mails to friends or counselors – treasure them. They can end up being valuable sources of information. A shared journal is important but, in addition, reserving journals for the private use of individual alters can also be beneficial. Another friend of mine with Dissociative Identity Disorder writes: We offer a drawing pad/journal/notebook to alters that they can keep private from the rest of us if they wish. We have a basket of journals. Sometimes we share but we never read without permission. Often alters who had been asleep for years journal a lot privately for the first bit before they start really sharing with us in other ways. It’s kind of like learning you can trust the others by making sure they keep their promises in not reading what you write. Don’t Waste Dreams and Flashbacks Dreams and flashbacks can be exceedingly unpleasant, so don’t waste them. They contain valuable information, so record them. The obvious place for this is in your journal. Writing them out and thinking about them when relaxed and fully conscious can help remove some of their terror and might possibly prove beneficial, should the dream recur. The practice also provides a good opportunity to ask alters about the dream or flashback – what does it mean to them, how do they feel about it, and so on. Dreams can sometimes be like flashbacks – accurate memories of past events that you may or may not be aware happened. Alternatively, some dreams are the mind trying to come to terms with things that have been bothering you. Sometimes you were not even conscious that these matters were bothering you. Both of these types of dreams can be valuable in giving you insight into what some of your alters might be coping with. However, some dreams can actually be alters seeking to communicate with you, either by symbolically revealing how they feel or by sharing accurate memories. Additionally, some dreams are alters trying to come to terms with things by imagining themselves in various scenarios. Don’t Underestimate Art Although you might not feel artistic or even like art, most children like expressing themselves through art and so it could be a way of enticing quite young parts of you to express themselves (and so begin to communicate), especially as deep feelings can be impossible to put into words. Don’t forget that art can include collage, montage, using such mediums as Playdough (Play-Doh). Be cautious about using paint, however. Some alters find the fluidity of paint frustrating or even triggering. As well as portraits, and self-portraits, try visually expressing feelings and anything else that you feel the urge to portray. I encourage you to sometimes try art as therapy and a means to contact your alters. This will probably involve a different approach to art than you usually do. In this case, say out loud at the beginning and several times during the session, something along the lines of, “This is your turn to paint [or draw or whatever], and to have fun or express deep feelings and I promise to try hard not to criticize or interfere.” Then keep letting the artistic expression flow. Don’t worry if you think it looks hideous, childish, weird, dark or whatever. Don’t judge it negatively, or try to correct or improve it. Just let it come from within, saying out loud encouraging things about the art like, “Good!” Even if it seems you are just talking to yourself, toward the end of an art session or at the end (but before that part of you leaves), speak to the part out loud, saying such things as, “What feelings are you expressing through this art? Is there an event in your past that moved you to express yourself this way? What does this artwork mean?” And so on. Even if it is vague, take great note of what response comes to you (it might be good to write it down or audio record it for future reference) and dialog with the part of you that is revealing these things, coaxing that part to tell you more. Don’t comment negatively or say such things as, “That can’t be true.” Instead, listen carefully and express empathy and offer comfort and encouragement. It has been suggested that talking when being artistic should be minimized as it can interfere with the creative process. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that by striving for perfection or getting impatient with yourself in earlier attempts at art, you unknowingly pushed aside an alter, hurting his or her feelings and making the alter reluctant to try again. This makes it necessary to reassure alters that nothing like that will happen this time. How much approval and convincing is needed will vary from alter to alter. Try Poetry, Even if You Hate It You might hate poetry or be convinced you cannot write it but that might not apply to another part of you. In fact, the very attempt might encourage that part to take over during the writing session. Buy Toys Etc. If you feel yourself drawn to an affordable toy or game or something else that would normally be out of character for you, buy it and, when you feel the desire, play with it or use it. Not only will this comfort distressed little alters you have little contact with, it will encourage them to come out of hiding and to feel positively toward you, the person who gave them the toys. Use Reminders from Your Past Seek out things that remind you of various stages of your past – photos, school yearbooks, mementos, music, old movies or television series (including those for children), Facebook pages of people you have lost contact with, and so on. Other possibilities include following an old family tradition, seeking out old familiar smells (perhaps pine, bacon, cinnamon, aftershave, and so on) or cooking with a family recipe. Such things could elicit a response from alters. This should be done cautiously and prayerfully, however. If you are really desperate for a reaction you might actually visit areas where you once lived, make contact with people you knew at those times, and so on. I don’t recommend it, however. It could provoke extreme reactions from alters. You have Dissociative Identity Disorder only because you have suffered horrific things. You might expose yourself to predators you have always mistakenly thought were safe, and a highly vulnerable part of you might take over to ‘protect’ you – an alter who feels too little to resist the predator’s advances. Use Your Non-Dominant Hand From time to time, try such things as writing, artwork, playing sport or manual work, using the hand you do not normally use for that task. This might possibly entice out another alter, as some alters might be better at using that hand than you are or, even if they are not, your attempts at using that hand might be no better than that of a young alter and might therefore encourage that alter to participate. After using that hand for a while, talk out loud to yourself in the hope that an alter might hear and respond. Make Full Use of Inside Information If you have reached the point where you are friends with some alters, don’t forget to make full use of this advantage by asking them to search for more alters and, with the new alters’ permission, to tell you about these alters. Create a Safe Inner World I have left until now what is perhaps the most important way of facilitating interaction with alters. Alters can only write when they take over your body and your consciousness. When this happens you might lose consciousness – not in the sense of it being medically obvious but in the sense of you losing awareness of what is happening and so miss the opportunity of real-time interaction with an alter. The alternative is for you to look inward and meet your alters where they spend most of their time – not in control of your body but deep inside. To facilitate this, use your imagination to create a safe place in your mind where alters can interact with each other and with you. Just as imagining yourself relaxing on a tropical beach calms the mind, what you imagine can calm lonely, frightened, easily-spooked alters and entice them out of hiding. And because the emphasis is on the mind and not on what the body does, you and other alters can be conscious at the same time. Creating a fun, safe haven in your mind can motivate alters to remain together in a place in your mind that is easily accessible to you. That way, alters are less likely to make spasmodic contact with you and other times disappear into some unknown part of your mind where you can no longer interact with them. A link at the end of this page called How to Cure Dissociative Identity Disorder is devoted to explaining how to do this Be Aware of all the Reasons Why Alters Hide Reasons for certain alters hiding from you are explained in the next section. Obviously, it is critically important to address these matters in order to discover and communicate with these alters. Why Alters Hide To learn how to help your alters feel secure in revealing themselves to you, it is vital to understand the many valid reasons for their reluctance to do so. Regardless of whether they have D.I.D., it is normal for people to engage in self-talk, and for anyone with low self-esteem or low tolerance of imperfection, self-talk can get quite ugly. Often we would not speak to anyone else as abusively as the way we inwardly reprimand ourselves when frustrated. For example, if we make a mistake we might get angry and blast ourselves with the words, “You idiot!” Or if we get emotional or feel insecure or feel the urge to do something that is more common for little children, we might angrily tell ourselves, “Stop being a baby!” An alter is likely to assume you are speaking directly to him/her when you say such things, especially as it could well be that alter who made the mistake or felt scared or had a deep need for the comfort of a teddy bear or even a pacifier or something else that adults denigrate as babyish. Here are some additional common examples of reasons why, without you realizing it, an alter might feel scared of you or resent you: * An alter might have bravely and very tentatively shared a memory or deep secret with you and you rejected it as “stupid” or “false” or blabbed it to someone the alter fears is untrustworthy. (Abusers typically terrify alters with horrific threats as to what would happen if ever they told anyone about the abuse.) * You might feel you are being godly by getting angry with yourself for having the urge to engage in a habit you regard as wrong. Quite likely, however, what is sabotaging your efforts could be an alter who lacks your understanding that it is wrong or who lacks your spiritual resources to resist temptation. If so, that alter is likely to feel he/she is the object of your disgust and anger. * At times you might even get so frustrated and hateful toward yourself that you engage in self-harm – inflicting pain and wounding the body you share with your alters. * Sometime in the past, you might have sunk even to the ultimate insult of mistaking an already highly traumatized alter for a demon. How would you feel about someone who claims to be morally superior and concludes you are not only eternally dammed and unredeemably evil but considers you to be so disgusting that he genuinely believes you are not even human but some form of hideous lowlife? * An alter might feel terrified of something because it is linked, in your alter’s memory, with a horrific event. Being unaware of the full extent of this, you might make yourself – and your alter – do whatever it is that traumatizes your alter. Forcing this upon your alter can feel as abusive to the alter as forcing someone’s head under the water until he nearly drowns. I will provide just three of many possibilities: 1. Many abuse survivors occasionally view or deliberately fantasize about pornographic material, hoping it will help desensitize them, and mistakenly thinking it might contribute to healing; not realizing that it is traumatizing certain alters who, more than is realized, are carrying the pain of past abuse. 2. Your alters might have ‘protected’ you from knowing that a relative you like has molested you at every opportunity he/she has had. Dismissing your inner qualms as ridiculous, you decide to visit your relatives or let them visit you, spending a couple of nights in the same house as this offender. You lose awareness as soon as the offender approaches you, and another alter – perhaps several alters during the course of the assault – is forced to take over and endure the agony. 3. In The Dilemma of Feeling Pleasure When Abused I explain why it is normal for a clever molester to sometimes seduce a child by inducing sexual pleasure, even though at other times sex is highly traumatic for the child. You might, for example, have been seduced as a little child and come to enjoy it because it was never violent and, though by no means love, it was the closest imitation you were able to get. This abuser moves on and your continued craving for love drives you to approach another abuser, expecting gentleness but it turns out he is violent. You quickly escape by forming another alter who is forced to endure the horror that follows, while you remain oblivious to it. So there is a vast range of possible reasons for an alter regarding you as untrustworthy or even as an abuser. It is normal for all of us – not just for alters – to shrink from anyone who exposes us to perceived danger or gets angry or harsh toward us. Unlike most people, however, alters have already been deeply traumatized, which puts them on hyper-alert for anyone else who might possibly hurt them. When treated as a useless annoyance or as an enemy, alters can be expected to feel deeply hurt and rejected and want nothing to do with you. Before some alters would even consider sharing their hearts with you, you would have to do much to overcome the resentment they feel toward you and to convince them you have changed. Perhaps even now, you fear, despise or even hate certain alters. I have several webpages to help you sympathetically understand, and be a catalyst in the transformation of alters who are initially angry, hateful, dangerous, lustful, perverted and/or anti-God. Some of these pages are listed at the end of this webpage. Not being Conscious at the Same Time If you and your alter are conscious at the same time, it is called co-consciousness. It makes real-time communication possible. Some people are primarily co-conscious with their alters, some are almost never co-conscious, and some are in between. If co-consciousness does not occur, you will be forced to communicate either through leaving messages for each other (written, audio or video) or by relying on someone such as a friend or therapist telling you about the alter. Having a competent therapist is desirable, but having no way of communicating with parts of you other than through having someone else tell you about them, is far from ideal. It might be necessary at first, but I encourage you to work toward finding some way to communicate with your alters yourself. After all, they are vital parts of you, not anyone else. Usually, the grass seems greener in the other field: people who are primarily co-conscious tend to be envious of those who are not, and vice versa. Those who are co-conscious are often tempted to believe they must be making it up. They think that if only they could be caught doing things they have no recollection of, it would confirm that their D.I.D. is definitely real. The problem is that those who are seldom co-conscious find it much harder to get to know their alters and it seems unreal to them because of that. Moreover, to move toward full healing, alters need to fully cooperate with each other, which necessitates co-consciousness. So those who are co-conscious are already well on the way. Anyhow, even though they might not currently realize it, most people with D.I.D. eventually discover they have certain alters who are usually asleep when the rest of them is awake, and vice versa. In this situation, the time when you lose consciousness (go to sleep), or are close to it, is the time when another alter is likely to take over (gain consciousness). As a result, late at night could be like a changing of the guards – a time when two parts of you have brief contact, as one goes off duty and another takes over. For this reason, when you are close to sleep or when waking in the middle of the night or in the morning are particularly likely times for discovering new alters. It’s a good time to try to tune in to what you are feeling and hearing internally and to try real-time communication by speaking in your mind or out loud (the latter can help make it seem more real), asking questions and informing in the hope that an alter might be able to hear. In order to contact alters who are not conscious when you are, consider leaving notes around saying something like this: You have multiple personalities. This is nothing to be afraid of. It is just how we survive at present. I am a part of you and I would like to speak with you. If you leave a note on this page I will reply. If you do this, maintain the habit of checking the notes every day, or the alter could reply and give up looking for your response. An alternative is to leave verbal messages using a recording device. You might need to leave simple instructions as to how to operate the device. If real-time, non-written communication is possible, speaking in your mind or even vividly picturing something (such as imagining yourself hugging an alter) might work. When convenient, however, it is often clearer and more effective to speak out loud to your alters. If, for example, people who might not understand D.I.D. are in the next room, use an audible whisper. “How do I know when an alter is speaking? Is there a difference between when an alter is speaking and my own thoughts?” asked someone desperate to learn. I replied, “Especially in the early stages it is likely to seem very vague. If you think there is a slight chance that you could be hearing from an alter, proceed as if you really are. If it truly is an alter, it might take days or even weeks and you are likely to often be tempted to doubt, but you will gradually receive more and more confirmation as to whether what you think might be an alter really is one.” “I feel silly. It seems as if I am just talking with myself,” she said. “You won’t always know whether they are hearing you or not,” I replied. “Whether certain alters are likely to be active or not depends not only on the time of day but on circumstances. For example, certain alters might help you when you are at work, others when you are parenting, others might be more likely to be present when you are relaxing and still others when you are feeling scared or upset. And sometimes alters who are usually out can get freaked by something and go into hiding.” Alters Feeling Duty-Bound to Remain Silent Yet another reason for alters clamming up is that many alters can feel that it is their life-long duty to care for you by keeping information from you. This could include keeping you unaware of their existence. Before they are willing to reveal themselves, and their secrets, they need assurance of two things: 1. That it is safe to tell you Abusers obviously have strong reasons for desperately wanting their criminal behavior kept secret. So they usually do their utmost to terrify their victims into silence, often with horrific threats they cannot keep but seem believable to a little child. Or they instill fear that telling anyone would break up the family or devastate a loved one. So any parts of you who are aware of the threats will feel strongly pressured to keep from you anything they think you (or they) must keep silent about. Furthermore, driven by fear of the consequences, such alters often use their own threats and influence to keep other alters silent. 2. Alters also need convincing that you are now strong enough to face the truth and that you are eager to do so. Alters were formed precisely to keep secrets from you because in your young and fragile state you did not have the emotional strength to cope. As mentioned, this protectiveness can include hiding from you all awareness that alters even exist. They do not want, for example, you supposing you must be insane or demonized to have alters, and becoming suicidal as a result. Alters get so locked into this habit of ‘protecting’ you from information, that it continues long after the crisis is over and you have matured and gained an accurate understanding of D.I.D. Alters may not even realize that you and circumstances have improved. Often they could still believe all of you are back in the era when they were originally formed. Later in this webpage we will go deeper into how keeping a personal journal can help you contact alters. For now, I will limit myself to mentioning what the above suggests should be included in this journal. However, even at this early stage, I should point out that journaling does not have to be in writing. One can use audio recording or even a video diary. In fact, although I usually think in terms of writing, audio or video are advantageous because some alters – especially very young ones – might not be able to read or write. (Some alters, however, due to age or trauma, might not be able even to speak, in which case communication might only be possible by thought.) In the hope that the message eventually gets through to relevant alters, your journal should be interspersed with several entries emphatically stating the current calendar year. Merely writing today’s date is unlikely to suffice. For example, a number beginning with 20 might not even seem like a date to an alter used to seeing years starting with 19. Learning that it is many years later than he or she had supposed is likely to be such mind-boggling information for an alter as to stagger belief. You should therefore include instructions as to how this can be verified, such as where a calendar is located. You might also paste in your journal a portion of a newspaper that mentions the date, or a coin that was minted i the last few years, and so on. So much is digital these days, but your alter’s awareness might still be stuck in the pre-digital era. Since, unknown to you, an alter could be terrified of a former abuser’s threats, list in your journal every reason why it is now safe to tell. Reasons might include the fact that you now have an adult body, that you are no longer financially dependent on your parents and you live independently, that some people (name them) from your past have died or are now feeble or live a long way from you or they do not know your present address or you have not seen them for a certain number of years (be specific). Provide as much proof as you can, such as an obituary or photo of a grave if the person is dead. Remember that people you are currently convinced were safe, might have actually terrified your alters. Another important message to include is that unless they give you their permission, you will not blab anything that alters reveal. If they cannot trust you to maintain their confidentiality, do not expect to hear from them. Yes, it might be nice if you could pass on the information to a counselor/therapist but you will never get any more information to pass on if you betray them. By all means, after they reveal themselves, try to persuade them to give permission, but say nothing until they agree. In addition to recording the above matters in several places in your journal, keep reminding yourself (preferably out loud at times) of these facts, especially at times when you feel on edge. On one of the occasions that you do this, an alter could be listening for whom this information will remove the pressure to keep secrets from you. You also need some serious soul searching as to whether alters might be right in presuming that, deep down, you do not want them to reveal themselves to you. Truth sets us free, and ignorance can have terrifying implications, but many of us still fear the truth. Yes, the truth might initially hurt but, like going to a dentist, the alternative will end up being far more painful. To quote what I wrote elsewhere: Living in denial can never change reality. Not even embracing the truth can change the past, but it empowers us to change our future and find true healing. Here is some encouragement: a part of you already knows the truth and has coped with it ever since the event happened, without even having the maturity, spiritual resources and human support that you have. Although alters who keep secrets from their host often do not realize how much better equipped the person is to handle the truth than he/she used to be, they are not always wrong in their belief that the person is not ready for the truth. I used to puzzle over why people often slog through years and years of counseling/therapy that has nothing to do with D.I.D., before ever discovering that they have D.I.D. Now, however, I am increasingly seeing it as a necessary prerequisite. You need to keep working toward the point where you could learn any atrocious secret about your past and be able to handle it. Likewise, you need to keep moving toward the point where you could discover that, even recently, you had done appallingly evil things – such as sex crimes, extra-marital affairs, even murder – that until now had been kept from your consciousness, and you would still believe that full forgiveness is freely available to you through Christ, and that you could forgive yourself, just as God forgives you. Probably more than you currently realize, you will need to study links at the end of this webpage to reach this level of faith in God’s forgiveness. To attain the godly level of being able to forgive yourself for absolutely anything, you will need to start with imaginary situations that are not so atrocious and very gradually work your way up to truly horrendous ones. While doing this, it is important to keep reminding yourself that you are dealing solely with hypotheticals. Otherwise, a part of you might only become aware of your thoughts partway through and mistakenly suppose you are grappling with something that actually happened. The benefits of working your way through these imaginary scenarios are twofold. First, it is preparing yourself ahead of time, so that you will be equipped to cope, no matter what truths emerge. Second, it could have the effect of convincing key alters that you truly are ready for them to spill the beans. When alters start revealing themselves, they typically surface in fairly rapid succession, precipitating a chaotic emotional roller coaster. Each alter has his/her own terror, raw pain, vivid memories, confusion over lost years, and so on, and all of this will hit the rest of the person like one tsunami after another. To cope with the turmoil of alters revealing themselves, and to lead every one into healing, there are so many liberating truths that must be firmly concreted into every fiber of your being. This is a long process that, to put it mildly, is much better done with a clear head, prior to being overwhelmed by the turmoil of alters revealing themselves to you. It’s like a soldier who needs to get fit and disciplined before reaching the front line. It’s too late in the heat of battle to discover how much he needs to build up his body to have the strength and stamina to survive. Moreover, when unshakably convinced of the truths listed below, you will be equipped with comforting answers that will greatly shorten the time of pain, shame, guilt and confusion that recently surfaced alters bring with them. Because it is so critically important that we drive truths so deep into our spirits that they become immovable certainties, I have provided vital links at the end of this webpage for each truth. You will need to study these links in detail because it’s staggering how easily truths on which we thought we had a firm grip, slip from our grasp when shaken to the extreme. There is a huge amount of reading in those links because these are huge issues that we think we know enough about until hit by what will probably feel like a continual and overwhelming succession of traumatized alters. What you need so much work on is: * Believing that full forgiveness is freely available to you through Christ, and learning to forgive yourself, just as God forgives you. * Being convinced of God’s love for you. This becoming a deep conviction is critically important to one’s self-esteem and for every alter to feel drawn to his/her Healer. * Knowing in every fiber of your being that God is good and weeps for those who suffer. * Knowing how to heal from sex abuse. * Understanding the critical importance of facing hurts and truths rather than burying them. * Knowing how to deal with self-harm. * Knowing how neither to fear anger nor let it destroy you. * Learning how to be a positive, hope-filled person, no matter how oppressive things get. * Learning how to cope with fear, anxiety and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. * Understanding your authority over demons, and that anyone who has entered into a covenant with Satan can renounce it and be freed by Jesus and fully accepted by God. * Concluding that suicide is not an option. * Learning how to lessen sleep problems (getting adequate sleep is a huge problem for people with Dissociative Identity Disorder). Until alters receive from you the reassurances I said you should include in your journal, some will remain too scared to talk, not just with you but with anyone. Given, however the range of issues that an alter might have with the host (who is often both the most dominant part and the part that alters most seek to protect) it is hardly surprising that alters often end up talking with another person, such as a counselor/therapist or trusted friend, rather than the host. If you learn that this is happening, ask the person who has won the alter’s trust to give priority to encouraging the alter to speak with you. After all, the alter is a part of you, not part of the other person. The alter has exclusive access to part of your intellectual capacity, and memories of key parts of your past. The alter lives with you, 24/7. For all these reasons, it is much more important that alters accept you and bond with you than with anyone else. Not only might an alter speak to someone else rather than you, he or she might speak with another alter before doing so with you. So if you have any contact with alters, ask them to help introduce you to them. Still More Reasons for Alters Being Silent In the light of what has already been said, it should no longer seem strange if alters are not revealing themselves to you. And there are still more possibilities. Demons Neither I, nor my friend, had the slightest idea that one of her young alters had been tricked by her abuser into being utterly convinced that he had placed a demon inside her who would kill her the instant she revealed herself to anyone. Thankfully, quite out of the blue, this alter suddenly spoke to me. It turned out that she had heard me speaking kindly to other alters and she grew to like me so much and became so desperate to break her own isolation that she decided to speak to me, even though she was certain that the very act would kill her. Naturally, that touched me deeply. This ‘demon’ was possibly just one of the abuser’s lies, but real demons can sometimes be involved. Although great care must be taken not to confuse a very angry, misguided alter for a demon, there are times when demons must be cast out before certain alters feel able to communicate. In fact, the friend just mentioned had had demons and perhaps it was more than coincidence that it was not until after the demons had been dealt with that any alters started revealing themselves. Interestingly, her alter who thought a demon would kill her went on to become the most fearless of her alters (even more than the host and protector) in resisting demons. Demons are nothing for Christians to be alarmed about. See For webpages about demons and every Christian’s authority over them, see : Spiritual Warfare Demons - The hidden reason for our doubt Becoming a Winner! - Breaking habits, addiction, temptation and demonic powers Satan and Evil Spirits Demon-Like Protector Alters It’s time to delve a little deeper into the already mentioned possibility of a key alter discouraging or actually stopping other alters from revealing themselves. With several different people, there have been times I’ve been speaking with an alter when suddenly something within the person interrupted with threats about hurting the alter if he/she says another thing. At such times, I shut down communication with the threatened alter and focus entirely on the aggressor. A hostile alter is likely to come across as filled with evil, hate, anger, violence and give the impression of being all-powerful. Often I’m left wondering if it really is a demon, but I have seen more than enough to avoid that conclusion without a vast amount of proof. I can do such things as talk about the power of the cross and make any demon very nervous, without treating whoever I’m addressing as a demon. At the same time, I remain acutely aware that many genuine alters have been told slanderous lies about Jesus. Some abusers even get someone to dress up as Jesus and hurt people. So it is not unusual for alters to suppose they hate Jesus, even though it turns out they only hate a grotesque imposter. The first thing I do is calmly show the alter lots of respect and kindness. I usually apologize, saying I did not realize secrecy was a concern and telling the alter I would like to do a deal. I say I wish no one any harm and although I like and respect the other alter, I will cease all communication with that alter without the protector’s permission, provided the protector agrees not to hurt that alter. Often making this promise tears my insides because the threatened alter had been in deep distress and I long to comfort him/her. Nevertheless, first priority must be to stop one alter tormenting another. So until there is a breakthrough I focus solely on the protector, establishing the protector’s trust and endeavoring to learn why the protector is so desperate to silence the other alter. Usually, the aggressive alter is stunned and deeply humbled when I convince him/her what year it is. This realization typically throws the alter into confusion and makes the alter doubt all his/her presumptions. Occasionally, however, an alter knows what year it is and even a few facts about current events but has not thought through the implications and has not realized, for example, how old that makes the former abuser and how safe he/she now is. This is when I need to know the person’s background so that I can provide the protector with all the reasons why he/she no longer has to fear the abuser’s threats. Seemingly scary, angry alters are usually fairly quickly won over by them showing kindness and respect. Usually, they act aggressively precisely because they expect everyone to be hostile. Before long, they are humbly apologizing for their fear-driven outburst and will let me continue to help the alter I had been previously speaking with. For a webpage devoted to further help with protector alters, see Protector Alters. Baby Alters Too Young to Speak Mothers speak to their babies because this is how babies eventually learn how to speak, and because babies and people learning a new language are able to understand more than they can speak. Mothers also communicate through touch, body language and through guessing the babies’ needs and meeting them. Do likewise with any baby alters who are too young to speak. Like many alters who for various reasons do not speak, baby alters are likely to communicate to other parts of the person through giving them feelings or flashes of their visual memory. The baby might cry a lot but eventually, he or she will respond to your soothing attention and will eventually begin to speak. The process of learning to speak might be much quicker than for a normal baby. This is because the ability to talk is already stored in the brain that both you and the baby share. All that is required is for the baby to discover how to access this part of your brain. Other Alters Unable to Speak Some alters, even though formed at an age when other parts could speak, might have never spoken in their lives, due to trauma and/or lack of confidence or perhaps not regarding themselves as human. They could take a while before they learn how to speak or gain the confidence to do so. Communicate with such alters as you would baby alters. Try to guess their fears and concerns and give them much reassurance and keep chatting to them about yourself, even if they don’t reply. Sometimes such alters communicate by thought to another alter who then acts as the alter’s spokesperson until the alter is ready to speak for himself/herself. Alters Who Cannot Understand Your Language If you only learned at a certain age the language you now regularly use and prior to that you knew another language, an alter formed before that age is likely to not understand you or be able to communicate in your current language. It is not impossible for an alter to know only one language and for you to know only another language. Sleeper Alters You could easily have one or more sleeper alters, whose role is to remain inactive (and thus undetectable) unless triggered by certain rare events. An example is an alter created for the purpose of committing suicide (i.e. killing all of you) if the alter concludes on the basis of his/her limited perception of events that there is no acceptable alternative. A significant factor in keeping oneself from suicide can be compassion for loved ones (including other alters) hurt by one’s death. So this alter could feel duty-bound to have no contact with anyone, in order to avoid risking any emotional bond that could hinder his or her resolve to kill the body if circumstances deteriorate. It is obviously very important to persuade any such alter that there are always better options or at least options more pleasing to God than suicide or murder. The problem, of course, is that if you have such an alter, you are likely to be completely unaware of it. It is therefore important to regularly explain to yourself why killing oneself or anyone else is never acceptable. Hopefully, this message will eventually get through to, and begin to convince, any sleeper alters. Here is a suggested plan of action if suicidal thoughts come: 1. Take the matter seriously. Assess how great and immediate the threat is. For example, is it just a feeling or is there a definite plan to commit suicide? 2. Quickly check all the alters to ascertain from which alter the plan is coming. Analyzing what triggered the suicidal feeling can be a clue as to which alter it could be. Ask any alters you know to help you find the alter involved. Then give that alter whatever comfort, support, encouragement, prayer etc. is needed. 3. If your attempts to help the alter are insufficient or the alter cannot be identified, you might need to activate the anti-suicide plan. This has four levels, depending on the seriousness of the situation: (1) Break the isolation. Don’t be alone, even if it is only going to a store so that you are around people. (2) Call a friend and speak to him/her without mentioning the suicidal thoughts. (3) Tell the friend you are feeling suicidal. (4) Urgently call a counselor/therapist or a suicide helpline. It is possible for a sleeper alter to be formed by an abuser with a mission to wake up and commit crimes upon receiving a certain trigger such as a coded signal. Sometimes such alters can wake without the trigger, as, for example, a result of prayer or someone taking authority over them in Jesus’ name. They need to be taught that they are no longer subject to the abuser’s demands and that they can resist any urges that might grow very strong when triggered. Undetected Abusers? Since child abusers usually prefer children, they typically leave their victims alone when they grow up. In rare instances, however, people can have alters who are still contacting an abuser and being controlled by that person without the host’s awareness. Sometimes, they have no idea the person is even an abuser. Don’t be surprised if some alters stay silent if the abuser still has access to them by phone, Internet or in person. Alters who Disappear Alters you have known will sometimes disappear. Occasionally, such alters are feared to be dead. In fact, even the alters who disappear can sometimes believe they are dead, and sometimes alters go to be with God to be comforted. Nevertheless, alters cannot die while the rest of the body is still alive. They are simply out of contact, and you are likely to see them again when they feel that outside circumstances have changed enough for them to feel safe about returning. When an alter is not around for a while, it is common for people to mistakenly assume they have merged or integrated with another alter. If this really has happened, then the alter or alters with whom this alter has integrated will be very aware of it. They will feel more empowered because they will have this alter’s strengths and abilities in addition to their own. What usually happens when an alter disappears, however, is that something the alter found scary or disturbing has caused him/her to panic and flee from contact with the outside world, and sometimes from contact with other alters as well. Alters who are just getting used to being out of hiding are particularly jittery and confused. The slightest thing is likely to send them scurrying into hiding so that they can work through the implications of what they have just learned. Usually, they will be back out again fairly soon. For alters who have been out much more, it usually takes something more significant to spook them. It could still be quite harmless but it is something that deeply upsets them, such as something that vividly reminds them of some past terrifying experience. When the alter who vanishes is one who has been out a lot, the loss is likely to be severely felt because that alter could have exclusive access to knowledge and skills that are vital to employment or everyday life. (This is one reason why other alters should ideally be trained up to cover such a loss.) How long the alter will be in hiding is anyone’s guess. To help entice them out, list in your journal good things that have happened and how things have improved since they were last out and keep reminding yourself of these things from time to time. Prayer I urge you to pray that God reveal every alter to you in the sequential order and timing that would be best for you. He knows far more about this than you or any counselor/therapist. How to Win Your Alters’ Trust and Affection We will soon discuss how to detect hints as to when an alter could be more likely to be able to hear you. Having just mentioned some of the fears and resentments that alters might have toward you, however, makes this the appropriate place to mention how these barriers might be overcome. Thankfully, although it can be challenging, you have something huge in your favor: underneath all the hurt and suspicion, your alters are still desperate for your genuine love and approval. Here are some suggestions as to what to tell alters, even if you are not sure they are able to hear you: * You are more important to me than I ever realized. I should have valued you, listened to you and been a good friend to you. If I have ignored you or done anything to hurt you or annoy you, I was wrong and I want to do everything I can to put it right. Please tell me what I can do to make it up to you. * I am grateful to you and forever indebted to you for all the times you spared me pain and distress by bearing it for me. From now on, I want to do all I can to help you bear this pain and find full healing from it. * What can I do to help you feel safer and more cared for? * If you would like me to hug you or listen to you, I would love to do so. [To hug an alter, regard your alter as a full person with a body, and vividly image yourself hugging him/her. Try to both see and feel this in your mind.] * Is there something affordable I can buy you? Alters desperately need unconditional love and tenderness, patience, kindness and encouragement. They need to feel valued and believed and liked. You cannot expect them to share their hearts with you if they feel unable to trust you to respect their confidentiality or cannot trust you to handle upsetting information without you either freaking out or thinking they are liars or stupid. The Power of Being Kind to Every Alter You Discover It can be hard to get the ball rolling, but once you start befriending one alter, it will get easier and easier for others to connect with you. As alters who have remained hidden, slowly become aware that you have warmly accepted, befriended, believed and supported one of your alters, they will begin to think that it could be safe and/or advantageous for them to likewise reveal themselves to you. So once there is a breakthrough with one alter, it will be a little easier for a second alter to follow, easier still for a third, and so on. Additionally, alters you have befriended might not only put in a good word for you but might even introduce you to some other alters. For each alter you discover, find out his/her favorite food, music, color, clothes, activities, books and so on. Providing these things, plus daily talking with each alter and building up each one’s self-esteem can be most helpful in enticing alters to stay out or come out again after going back into hiding. The more often alters are out, the stronger and more healed they will get, the bigger help they will become to you and the more likely it is that other alters will be encouraged to reveal themselves to you. In the early stages it will feel as if you could not cope with more alters, but as you build up those alters you know, they can be inspired to greatly ease your workload by comforting, supporting and training other alters. Just as babies start off being a huge drain to parents but can grow up to be an invaluable support, so it is with alters, only the transformation can be much quicker. Far more than you currently realize, you need for your alters to reach their amazing potential. This cannot happen if they spend most of their time suppressed or in hiding. Your alters healing and remaining out is critical to your wellbeing, so keep encouraging them and assuring them that you want and need them. One of my friends who is healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder writes: We try to make sure every alter is able to get the time to do what he/she would like to do, both in processing things [mentally coming to terms with new information] and in fun. This often means making schedules and arrangements. When two of us like the same activity we can share it, which leaves more time for one who needs a more solitary activity. We are not always good at this but we try. It being counterproductive for an alter to go back into long-term hiding is one of several reasons why it is beneficial to create in your powerful imagination several large, beautiful areas, each of which is securely sealed off, preventing everyone else from entering. The only entrance to each sealed off area is an impenetrable door that can be solidly bolted from the inside. On the outside of the door is a ‘Vacant’ sign that immediately changes to say ‘Occupied’ when it is bolted and at the same time the name of the occupant appears on the door. Anyone inside is to be left alone. Next to the door, however, is an intercom that is heard throughout the sealed-off area and cannot be switched off. If it is deemed important, a person can speak on the intercom or leave a message for the alter inside but it must be very short. The message may be longer only if the alter in hiding is happy for the conversation to continue. Even God agrees never to enter without first using the intercom and being allowed in by the alter, and he will leave again whenever the alter tells him to. There are various unpredictable events where the intercom could prove quite important. One is a need to tell the alter if outside circumstances have changed so much that he/she can now feel safe to come out. Another is to give reassurance and encouragement to the alter. Yet another is if alters left to carry on without this alter desperately need certain information known only to the alter who is hiding. Merely knowing where an alter is hiding can help calm alters who are left to cope. Believe What Alters Reveal Often a key factor in the formation of alters is that the person received no support because no one would believe the very real danger he/she was in. So not being believed is most likely already a sore point – or even highly traumatic – for many of your alters. Please don’t add to this by not believing them. Also, them telling you probably took a lot of courage on their behalf. You need to make them feel it was well worth them taking the risk in sharing with you. Alters were formed to keep from you – and even each other – upsetting information. Especially if you are the host, you are likely to have been deliberately kept in the dark to allow you to function in everyday life without having to cope with awareness of devastating events. For example, it is very common for some alters to be kept unaware of cruel things done by a loved one. It is quite likely that alters have been so effective in keeping information from you all these years that when they eventually begin to spill the beans, what they share will seem unbelievable to you. Believe your alters, but be aware that, especially in traumatic circumstances, a person can switch rapidly from one alter to another and then another, thus preventing any single alter from knowing everything about that event – unless all alters involved were to later share all that they know. So even for events that an alter knows a lot about, both you and the alter might lack certain critical details and be almost unknowingly relying on guesswork or presumptions to fill in the gaps. Each alter is a vital part of the jigsaw but none, including yourself, has all the pieces until every alter has shared everything. This makes it important not to jump to conclusions. For example, you might see in a flashback part of a person but not enough for certain identification, Avoid presumptions as to the person’s identity, even though it might look rather like someone you know or – as far as you know – only one person had access to you at that time. Another important thing to be mindful of is that abusers often deliberately feed their victims false information and some use horrific tricks to traumatize them into submission. For instance, they might make a victim eat animal parts, claiming them to be human. Some abusers are skilled at using conjuring tricks (and it is especially easy to convince a young, highly traumatized and drugged child). They might, for example, get a sadistic accomplice to pretend to be Jesus or fool a child into believing the child killed someone. Name Your Alters as Soon as You Can Nowadays, whenever a new species of plant or animal is found, it is usually not something that has never been seen before, but it looks so much like another species that it had never previously been distinguished from that species. Likewise, you need to know each of your alters well, or you could miss the fact that you are talking to an alter you have never previously met. As much as they will allow, learn the name of each alter, or choose a name that both you and they accept. Regularly asking which alter is talking will give the alter the opportunity to indicate that he/she is not an alter you have previously met. “Take a roll call,” suggests a friend who has so far discovered several alters, “and ask if anyone else is there.” More than this, however, when you have found more than one alter, continually checking the identity of the alter you are speaking with (if there is the slightest doubt) will help you keep building as clear and detailed a picture as possible of each alter’s character. This detailed understanding of each alter will help you avoid confusing an alter that is new to you with one you already know. What makes this important is that sometimes, out of shyness, newly surfaced alters pretend to be another alter. So be on the alert for alters who seem to be acting out of character. They might, for example, seem more timid or younger or to be wrestling with problems that the alter they are pretending to be has already overcome. You are likely to be surprised at how you come to expect different levels of maturity, knowledge and so on from different alters. If you mistake one alter for another you could hurt that alter’s feelings by expecting too much from him or her. You might, for example, chide an alter for acting as if he/she did not know something that you are aware is known by the alter he/she is pretending to be. Ideally, keep a record of every alter and jot down details about each of them. Even if you are sure you will remember all of this, something unforeseen could happen that causes you to go into hiding and another alter who lacks this information would, at least temporarily, be forced to replace you. Critically Important If searching for alters is like prospecting for gold, making contact with a previously unknown alter is like locating the motherlode you have been looking for all your life. Be mindful, however, of times when prospectors have found gold deposits and temporarily left, only to discover to their horror that they cannot locate it again. Since each alter has the potential to make life better and easier, losing contact again would be a significant loss. It happens far too often, however. There are two basic reasons for alters going back into hiding. Let’s start with the one that is no cause for alarm but needs to be understood to avoid undue concern. 1. Most previously unknown alters have been deep inside for very many years. This means that when they first become aware of the outside world again they will be shocked to discover how flabbergastingly different it is from what they expected. They will have similarly lost awareness of their outside body over all that time and their body might not merely have grown up but it could even be a different gender to what they had expected. This is not because of a sex change operation but because they had been misinformed about their gender or, in order to feel safer, they had convinced themselves that they are the opposite sex. Imagine how it would send you reeling if you suddenly found yourself twenty years older, or the opposite sex, or permanently in another part of the country and no longer going to school, or married to a stranger with children that are yours but you’ve never met before – or all of these combined. This is how alters feel after having been inside since your childhood. Is it any wonder that they feel an overwhelming need to withdraw every now and then for at least a few hours to try to get their head around all these massive and totally unexpected changes? These types of withdrawals are nothing to be concerned about. The alters will soon come out again. 2. Now for the more serious reason for losing contact with alters. For most alters who have been in hiding for a long while, the outside world used to be a terrifying place in which people tormented them. So, naturally, they would prefer to withdraw from the outside world and, if possible, sleep indefinitely. This is something you need to do all you can to avoid. The way both to keep them awake and to help them realize how current reality is actually desirable, is to regularly engage them in conversation. I suggest you do this at least once a day. They might resist this a little but it will end up achieving much for them and for all of you. The Bottom Line Dissociative Identity Disorder begins as an extreme response to an extreme situation, but it ends up a nightmarish addiction to not facing issues that desperately need facing. It starts off as a child having no choice and ends up a way of life with the potential to ruin your adulthood because even though you now have a choice, acting like the helpless child you once were has become a crippling habit. Put in monetary terms, it is like going into unavoidable debt, hurtling toward financial ruin, and then you finally begin to earn an income and have the potential to end the nightmare but you find yourself continually overwhelmed by devastatingly powerful temptations to block from your consciousness your economic crisis and keep plummeting headlong into disaster by reckless spending. This addiction to living in denial is as cruel as forcibly injecting a child with heroin until living without the drug seems intolerable. Being healed from Dissociative Identity Disorder is so much better than the alternative that it is worth any cost, but it involves facing memories and issues that will take an iron will to face. No matter how weak and useless your battered self-esteem tricks you into thinking yourself to be, however, with God you can become one of the heroes who heal. Discovering alters is an exciting adventure, with significant challenges but immense rewards. I do not claim to have addressed every possibility but I believe I have provided you with enough to further your healing journey. In addition, I believe you are now empowered with the understanding of what keeps alters silent so that you can develop your own techniques for furthering your healing. Recommended reading: We Christians have a tendency to be so harsh on ourselves that it hinders healing. So, unless you have not already done so, I suggest you read God, the Bible, & Christian Factors in Healing Dissociative Identity Disorder before proceeding. How to Cure Dissociative Identity Disorder is the webpage mentioned above that describes whole to create an inner world to facilitate interaction between alters. Next Webpage in this Series: How to Speed Healing of Dissociative Identity Disorder . Related Pages Help with important truths that you need to get more firmly into your being than ever before (remember to explore links at the end of each page). Being convinced of God’s love for you Receiving a Personal Revelation of God’s love for you Knowing how to heal from sex abuse Healing from Sexual Abuse Understanding the critical importance of facing hurts and truths rather than burying them Positive Thinking? Or Living in Denial? Knowing how to deal with self-harm Self-Harm Knowing how not to fear anger but not let it destroy you Revenge! Turning Hate into Healing Why to Truly Forgive Hinges on Getting in Touch with Your Anger Learning how to be a positive, hope-filled person, no matter how oppressive things get How to Change your Self-Image Finding Hope Where There is No Hope Learning how to cope with fear, anxiety and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): Christian Help & Cure Understanding your authority over demons Spiritual Warfare: Turning Spiritual Attack into Victory

Fear, Phobias, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Christian Help It might be a phobia or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or an anxiety disorder, but fear not only torments and cripples, it floods its victims with feelings of defeat; often shaming them into silence about the full extent of their fear. With so many people desperately trying to keep others from knowing how afraid they are, the result is a nasty vicious circle in which those worthy of our compassion feel more alone and abnormal than ever. Fear is not only highly distressing in itself, fearing something that most people are unafraid of can make one feel not just a loser but a freak subject to ridicule and scorn. Especially if you are a man, it makes you feel a failure, since one of the lies perpetuated about men is that real men are not human enough to suffer fear. It can even make one feel a failure as a Christian. So before tackling fear itself, I long to soothe the devastating feelings of shame, inferiority and condemnation that so often follow fear, like an infection following a wound and making an already crippling injury even worse. Approaching the topic from this direction will also help us understand the true nature of fear. Go Easy on Yourself: It Helps Before letting anyone condemn you by piously quoting, “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear,”(2 Timothy 1:7) remember that this same anointed Apostle wrote: 1 Corinthians 2:3 I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling . 2 Corinthians 7:5 For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn conflicts on the outside, fears within . Galatians 4:11 I fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you. (Emphasis mine) Fear is basically a strong temptation. Like all temptation, we can cave into it, or stagger on regardless. Not even our holy Lord avoided strong temptation. Indeed, since “he himself suffered when he was tempted” (Hebrews 2:18) and “has been tempted in every way, just as we are,” (Hebrews 4:15) he whose sweat was like blood (Luke 22:44) must surely have suffered horrific fear. One of many reasons why you could be quite unjustly condemning yourself for being afraid is that you might otherwise be healthy and have an undiagnosed medical condition causing you to be excessively anxious/afraid. I won’t dwell on this, but it would be cruelly negligent of me not to draw your attention to this very real possibility. Don’t be too hasty in dismissing this as inapplicable to you. This biochemical or neurological disorder is far more common than is generally realized. For example, just one way in which it can manifest itself is as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Even though two or three people in every hundred suffer from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, studies indicate that in the United States it takes an average of nine years from the onset of the disorder for people to receive even a correct diagnosis and, amazingly, a further eight years before they are suitably treated. Other ways that medically-induced anxiety can manifest itself is by Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Social Anxiety Disorder, phobias and so on. Paranoia induced by a psychotic illness such as schizophrenia is totally different but remains another example of fear that strikes people regardless of how macho or devout or intelligent they are. To lack compassion for people with such illnessness is as despicable as throwing stones at someone for being born a redhead. “Do not judge, or you too will be judged,” warned our Savior (Matthew 7:1). Then there’s Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which leaves trauma victims continually on-edge about the possibility of a repeat. People who can’t understand how trauma can have this effect are displaying not their mental toughness but their ignorance. One of the greatest ways to honor God is to trust him. Thankfully, however, our wonderful Lord fully knows us. He understands better than we do that trusting him is so much harder for those whose trust has been violated by key people in their life – especially if it happened repeatedly during their tender, most impressionable years. Simply having more fear or doubt than other Christians you know is not an acceptable reason for despising oneself. The devil is the Christian’s accuser (Revelation 12:10). Trying to make you feel bad about yourself is part of his job description. So let’s not put him out of a job by doing it for him. Not even Jesus could avoid temptation, and the devil is cunning enough to particularly target us in whatever areas we seem to him to be most vulnerable. That will vary from person to person. Those who suffer fewer attacks than you in the area of fear or doubt are sure to have far greater battles than you in some other realm – chemical dependence or debt or anger or lying or pride or some uncommon secret sin you would never guess. Just because the areas in which you are most attacked differ from someone else is no reason for feeling either superior or inferior. In most cases, when people seem to have greater faith than you, it is just an illusion. People can seem to have rock-solid faith in God’s provision when they have $10,000 in the bank and have never lacked. Put them $10,000 in debt with angry creditors after them and most people’s supposed faith will turn out to be largely hot air. Anyone can seem to be filled with the peace of God until they are mugged three times, been raped and suffered home invasions. Since you alone can experience exactly what you are feeling, suffering any unpleasant feeling such as fear, pain and grief, can be very isolating. If you had blood gushing out of massive wounds, you would have almost everyone’s sympathy but if there were no obvious injury – such as chronic back pain – the extent to which people believe you and sympathize will be much more variable. With no one but God able to get inside you and literally feel your terror, you are left wide open to being misunderstood and feeling devastatingly alone. And this is precisely what the enemy of our souls lusts for. Let’s briefly explore this supernatural angle. Our spiritual enemy is like a hungry lion that does not attack an entire flock but strives to isolate one sheep from the flock before attacking it. But the enemy we face employs this tactic with more intelligence than any lion. He is the master of psychological warfare, seeking to weaken us by telling us over and over and over that we are pathetic, useless, and so on. His most potent weapon, however, is condemnation. What makes condemnation so dangerous is that it deceives us into feeling cut off, not just from other Christians, but from God, our protector. Since we all tend to shrink from anyone we suspect thinks negatively of us, if we slip into the satanic snare of supposing that our fear causes Christians and God himself to think poorly of us, we will begin to see little point in staying close to the flock and to the Shepherd and so tend to drift from them, thus making ourselves highly vulnerable to spiritual attack. So in addition to significant natural reasons for feeling isolated and putting oneself down, there are strong reasons for expecting to have malicious, supernatural help in feeling this way. Understanding Fear Many of us find it particularly difficult to have fear-crushing faith. To understand this we must understand the nature of fear. For our protection, fear spreads beyond the specific. If you were almost killed by a snake, it is not enough protection to fear that specific snake from now on. You need to be wary of all venomous creatures. But if you were alone in a foreign jungle, how would you know what to avoid? That’s how fear operates. It does not know where to draw the line and acts as if you were alone, cut off from all other knowledge. Fear is dominated by personal experience and finds it nearly impossible to benefit from other sources of information, no matter how reliable and useful those sources are. Despite your intellect telling you it is idiotic, you are therefore likely to end up feeling ill at ease about harmless snakes, legless lizards, eels and so on, just because of a bad experience with a certain snake. This is also how it is with our feelings toward God. Having been let down and deeply hurt by humans – especially during our formative years – causes our fear to spread from certain unscrupulous people all the way to God himself. This fear persists despite our intellect telling us that God is not subject to human failings. Just as it is possible, but far from easy, for someone terrified of snakes to overcome an irrational fear of harmless snakes, so it is possible, but far from easy, to overcome the groundless fear that God might be as unreliable as other key people in our lives. If you battle fear, you stand in holy company. I won’t even attempt to list all the Old Testament saints who had to be urged not to fear, and we are well aware of how all of Jesus’ disciples fled and/or denied him. Let’s move to Spirit-filled apostles: 2 Corinthians 7:5 For when we came into Macedonia, this body of ours had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn – conflicts on the outside, fears within. Yes, “fears within,” says Paul of himself and his anointed companions as they served in the center of God’s holy will. “We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life,” writes this outstanding man of faith (2 Corinthians 1:8). Twice in the one prayer request, the great apostle sought prayer that he might not cave into fear: Ephesians 6:19-20 Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel, for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly  . . . (Emphasis mine) And with all the times that Paul got beaten for preaching, he had plenty to fear. He even had reason to fear going from point A to point B. If some people today have a fear of flying, remember that travel was so much more dangerous in Paul’s time that not only did he write that he had been shipwrecked three times and once spent a day and a night in the open sea, he had at least another shipwreck to go (2 Corinthians 11:25; Acts 27:41). Divine protection might have kept him alive but it did not prevent harrowing experiences. And in the next verse he wrote of being “in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits . . .” Frankly, the average Christian has weird ideas of what it means to be truly spiritual and divinely favored. The holy Son of God, of course, is the most Spirit-filled, not-of-this-world, apple-of-God’s-eye person ever to wear human flesh and yet not even he floated on some sort of spiritual equivalent of a drug-induced haze that insulated him from the devastating emotional intensity of life’s blows. Far from being granted super-human power to endure, the divine miracle worker who brought the supernatural into the lives of many failed even to drag his cross the required distance. Despite what some seem to think, we are not called to be less human than our Holy Lord. Thousands of Christians must slip on blindfolds whenever they meet such Scriptures as: Mark 14:33-34  . . . he began to be deeply distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,” . . . Luke 22:42,44 “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” . . . And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. Hebrews 5:7 During the days of Jesus’ life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from death . . . Not even angels could lower the intensity of Jesus’ anguish. It was after an angel came to sustain Jesus in the garden that his sweat dripped like blood to the ground (Luke 22:42-44). The highest we can ever hope for is to be like Jesus. It was prophesied that he delighted (King James Version of Psalm 40:8, but not Hebrews 10:7) to do God’s will. That sounds like the spiritual euphoria we hope for – until we face the reality that the one we worship sweat profusely while wrestling over submitting to God. Don’t imagine you have failed if you find life as hard as our Lord did. Most of us are plagued by some sort of irrational fear – a phobia – and we will find it amazingly unaffected by what we believe. For example, an expert can totally convince someone who is terrified of snakes that a certain large snake is perfectly harmless and yet despite utterly believing the expert he will still be jittery about picking up the snake. It would be lunacy for the expert to feel offended and conclude that the man’s fear indicates that he does not trust his expertise. And God is no lunatic: he knows when fear does not indicate lack of faith in his Word but merely indicates the strength of the fear. Many people might have had an easier life than you and so trust is easier for them but don’t imagine this fools God into regarding them as more diligent Christians. Counterattack The crushing fear that God might be like unscrupulous humans threatens to suck the life out of anyone with a history of being badly treated by humans. The way to counter this is to build in your mind an overwhelmingly powerful conception of God that is worthy of the stunning perfection of your Divine Lover. Keep your thoughts floodlit with the warm sunshine of the truth about God. Without it your mind will end up more like a dingy morgue than the residence of the King of kings. To the delight of demons – and sometimes with their help – slanderous lies about ourselves attack us all. Thoughts come to us, such as, “I’m useless. God doesn’t love me as much as Pastor Bigwig or Sister Starchpants. I’ll never amount to anything.” Letting such untruths scurry like a rat plague unchallenged through our head quickly becomes a degrading mental habit as enslaving as any addition. You can definitely break free but, especially at first, it’s a formidably hard slog, requiring persistent determination. 1 John 4:18-19  . . . perfect love drives out fear . . . We love because he first loved us. If perfect love is the antidote to fear, let’s remember that God alone is the source of perfect love. Since, as the above Scripture reveals, we love because he first loved us, falling in love with God begins with an awareness of how much he loves us. And from there faith is launched. As I remarked in one of my many pages about God’s love for us: I can easily believe that the atom-holding, earth-spinning, galaxy-sustaining, life-giving Source of everything wonderful can do whatever he likes. Even the devil believes God’s power. My difficulty is believing that God’s special love for me makes him long to use that power on my behalf. Few of us doubt that God can do amazing things. The weak link in our faith is believing that he would do such things for ordinary, inconsequential you and me. We suspect we are not sufficiently special in the Almighty’s eyes to warrant such attention. Oh yes, ‘God loves everyone,’ but we have a hunch that by the time that love reaches us it has spread pretty thin. I’m just one of millions. Why would God want to focus his omnipotence on me? If we could grasp the enormity of God’s love for us, our faith would sky-rocket. You might be able to parrot a theologically correct definition of God but that is of little benefit unless it dominates your thinking and attitudes, and your heart leaps with a resounding, “Yes!” at the very thought. In short, you need to be head-over-heels in love with the most beautiful Person in the universe. A key way to achieve this is to habitually spend considerable time thanking and praising God throughout the day – not just once a week but daily, and not just praising and delighting in God’s raw power but in his love and goodness, and not just his theoretical attributes but his intensely intimate and passionate love and warm tenderness toward you . Comfort “Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you,” says Scripture. Rather than beat ourselves up over finding this frustratingly difficult to put into practice, let’s luxuriate in the wonder that Almighty God, Ruler of the universe would invite seemingly insignificant you and me to hand over to him all our worries and concerns. And you don’t have to frantically beg him to help: “he cares for you,” says this word of God. “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. . . .” pleads Jesus (Matthew 11:28). Digest this Scripture: Philippians 4:4-8 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! . . . Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving , present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable – if anything is excellent or praiseworthy – think about such things . (Emphasis mine) See how enjoying the peace of God is bathed in rejoicing in God and thanking him and mentally dwelling on positive, praiseworthy things. Day after day, month after month, the mournful dirge of defeatist sayings and condemnation keeps repeating like an old broken record in our minds. Year after year the same depressing put-downs keep playing inside, worse than the most infuriating jingle from a TV commercial we can’t get out of our minds. Persistently drown out those oppressive lies with the sweet strains of adoring praise to God in your mind. As you keep lifting him higher, you are lifted higher. When praise slackens you begin to slump again. Let Fear Infuriate You There is a psychological condition known as Learned Helplessness whereby someone who is trapped in a situation for long enough eventually falls into defeatism such that when conditions change, allowing him to break free, he feels so defeated by his previous experience of being unable to escape that he doesn’t even muster a genuine effort to free himself and for years needlessly continues to act as if he were trapped. Learned Helplessness is not limited to humans. An example of it comes from the almost bygone era of circus elephants. Trainers drive a huge stake into the ground and chain a baby elephant to it. With all its might, the baby pulls in every direction for hours. Eventually it learns that escape is impossible and it gives up trying. By the time it grows massively strong it feels so defeated that all it takes to keep the powerful beast acting like a prisoner is a mere tent peg it could easily rip from the ground. This is what fear does to us: being intimidated by fear in the past causes us to reach the point where we no longer try to be free, even though we are now empowered by the Spirit of Almighty God. A dear friend of mine is truly inspirational. Despite having suffered a past filled with betrayals and oppression, she keeps overcoming and goes from strength to strength. The Lord told once told her, “Fear is a boundary to be pushed, not a cage to live in.” Run from your fears and they will terrorize. Face them and they will vaporize. Fear is a horrible feeling; but it is just a feeling; not reality. When it is based not on present danger but is a mere carryover from a past experience, fear is deception. It is a seductive temptress enticing us to cheat on God and ditch his beautiful plans for our lives. Fear is an opponent; an enemy wanting to stop us from enjoying what is rightfully ours. It is a thief; a disgusting con man cheating us out of our rights and duping us into letting him keep robbing us of peace, achievement and fulfillment. Fear is a weakling acting like a bully, humiliating us. It is low life asking us to strip ourselves of our Christ-bought freedom and dignity. It holds a toy gun to our head and for no rational reason we let it order us around. It is a malicious prankster hoping we will be terrorized by a cardboard cutout. It paralyses us into languishing in defeat like rabbits in a harmless spotlight. Fear is a dirty, pesky fly getting in our face, annoying us. It is a filthy liar falsely accusing us, and we not only meekly sit there listening to the slanderous putdowns, we foolishly accept the garbage as truth. Fear is a prison taking away our freedom; a bleak dungeon that we dupe ourselves into pretending is a cozy comfort zone. We block off the open door with a Home, Sweet Home placard and shiver in the cold; choosing chilly isolation instead of sunny reality; preferring to feel sorry for ourselves than become achievers. Fear is an ever-encroaching desert; a cancer than keeps spreading to healthy parts of a person. Fear is an enemy, but one we can defeat; winning for ourselves immense glory. Others might not realize the magnitude of our victory in breaking out of our cruel confinement into normality, but all of heaven knows and it will forever hail us as heroes. The appropriate response is to rise up in anger and refuse to let fear rob, cheat and bluff us any longer. It might be unpleasant, but fear is a mere feeling, and we are called to live by faith, not by feelings. We might have been born in defeat and mediocrity but we have been born again as children of the King of kings. This makes us divine royalty; princes and princesses of the Lord of the universe, not slaves to feelings. Empowered by supernatural union with our crucified Lord, let’s die to hopes of a soft life and rise to the glory of our calling as Christ’s champions. The journey to Christlikeness is neither quick nor easy, but as Christ sweat for you in Gethsemane, so you can sweat for him – and win eternal glory. Practical Help There are minor points of connection between God-pleasing faith and relaxation – the Bible speaks of the rest of faith, for example (Hebrews 4:3) – but being tense is not spiritually dangerous. Fear, however, always causes our muscles to tense up and it has been proved that if we can learn to keep our muscles relaxed in what would have been a fearful situation, fear will subside. The primary value of deliberately relaxing is twofold. Spiritually, it is making a faith statement – a little like leprous Naaman washing seven times in the Jordan, even though he felt ridiculous doing it (2 Kings 5:10-14). Psychologically, it helps because relaxed muscles are incompatible with fear. Making an effort to relax is faith in action – and faith is the most critical of all spiritual exercises. Here’s a technique that has been scientifically demonstrated to empower people to overcome phobias, etc. Lie down or sit in a comfy armchair. Literally, breathe easy. Imagine yourself in a very relaxing situation. It might, for example, be lazing on the white sand of a tropical beach. Hear the gentle lap of the sea. If convenient, aid relaxation by having soothing music quietly playing in the background. Worship music is a suggestion. After a while, concentrating on individual muscle groups, first tense a muscle group, then relax those muscles and gain an awareness of what it feels like to have each muscle group relaxed. Give special attention to your jaw muscles, your forehead, unclenching your fists, and relaxing your stomach muscles and your neck and shoulders. When you are fully relaxed, imagine yourself being very slightly exposed to whatever it is that you wish to stop fearing. If, for example, your goal is to overcome a fear of spiders, imagine yourself 20 paces from a small, harmless spider. If you cannot remain totally relaxed at that thought, immediately stop and think of the relaxing scene until you are utterly relaxed again. If 20 paces was too close, when you are ready to restart, you might have to imagine the spider being 50 paces away or even further. The goal is to be totally relaxed while thinking of a spider in the distance and very slowly imagine yourself closer and closer, progressing only at a speed that allows you to remain totally relaxed. If at any time you notice yourself being slightly tense, back off, get relaxed again and continue only when you are ready. This process will probably need to be continued every day for quite a while until you can be fully relaxed while imagining yourself close to a large spider. Once you can effortlessly do this, you are ready to try it with a real spider, starting again with the spider being a long way away and withdrawing if you notice yourself unable to remain totally relaxed. You’re smart enough to adapt this to fit whatever fear you wish to conquer. A Real Life Example A man e-mailed me, saying, “I am very depressed. I cannot even leave my house. I have been this way for three years. I just can’t get better. I have prayed many times for healing. Please pray for my healing.” I shared this anonymously with my ministry team and here’s one of the responses I received to pass on to him: My name is Margaret, I’m 59, divorced, disabled and a prayer warrior at NetBurst.Net . I feel God telling me to write to you, because I was once like you, my brother. For years I prayed that God heal me from the schizophrenic episodes and depression that plagued me. Then one day I heard a voice telling me it has been done already. I now recognize that voice as God’s. What does it mean? Well, I had wasted a lot of time waiting for a ‘miraculous delivery,’ thinking that I had to feel the healing; that it had to be instantly noticeable; that there was no longer any barrier keeping me a prisoner of Satan’s. What I’ve learned is that healing comes the moment we ask it, BUT we do have to take that first step to accept it. For years, I had blamed others for the isolation I felt. I blamed them for isolating me because of my schizophrenia, because they couldn’t understand what I was going through. I’d so withdrawn into myself that I couldn’t even begin to think of others; it was all about me. Then I felt Jesus gently take my hand, and lead me outside. I was terrified, but I knew Jesus was right beside me and would never leave me. So despite my fears and anxiety, I took a deep breath and, asking Jesus to stay with me, opened the door of my house and stepped outside. The first day, I just sat on my porch, enjoying the sun on my skin, breathing in fresh air, looking at things around me. The second day, I ventured down to the corner of my street. Each day I made another advance, until suddenly I found myself among the people that God was to call me to minister: the street folk. There I discovered that the world was more than myself, and I lost all depressive thoughts. Satan would have you remain trapped – just as he tried with me – waiting for obvious signs of ‘healing’; not wanting you to take that first step outside your self-imposed prison to discover the world waiting for you. Sometimes God does it all, but more often, God wants us to take part in our own healing. So, my brother, open the door, grasp Jesus’s hand, and step out in faith. You have been healed! God is just waiting for you to accept his healing. “Faith is resting in the knowledge that God has an objective in leaving me on the scene when I feel useless to Him and a burden to others.” Pamela Reeve Laughing at What Scares You In one of my webpages about nightmares I said that someone emailed me about how Jesus had taught her to overcome nightmares and sleep soundly. Her nightmares focused on ‘bad dad’ – her now-deceived abusive father who, when she was little, used to come into her bedroom when she was asleep. She calls Jesus ‘Daddy.’ Here’s a little of what helped her: During the day, Daddy and I played thinking games. At first it was easy. He sent me a thought like I was eating jello and a furry little ball with eyes and a smile jumped out. My part of the game was to make it not scary. So I sent Daddy a thought about making the ball my new pet! Even now I play with my new pet. His name is Sally. I asked Daddy why he was playing this game. He replied that it helps my mind grow strong enough to repel bad thoughts all by itself. That’s important for getting good sleep. He said I need to have a strong mind. Then, little by little, the games got harder. Daddy sent me the thought of bad dad coming in my room and I thought about Daddy coming in and snapping his fingers and turning bad dad into a funny clown who juggled and told funny jokes. I learned that the funnier the solution the better I felt. Love the Cure! Let’s strengthen ourselves by bringing together what we have so far learned. Church-goers lacking compassion for people suffering mental afflictions are highlighting not their doctrinal superiority but their embarrassing lack of entry-level Christian love. They are a clanging cymbal (1 Corinthians 13:1) who have never grasped that “The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love ,” (Galatians 5:6 – emphasis mine). Theirs is the pride that precedes a fall (Proverbs 16:18). Those deceived by an easier life into thinking they have great faith have a special promise to claim: “whoever exalts himself will be humbled” (Matthew 23:12). For far more people than realize it, being fearful is like being subject to migraines – literally a medical condition that strikes some but not others and who is struck has nothing to do with levels of faith, devotion or manliness. Likewise, having an easy, protected childhood surrounded by warm encouraging people will render a person much less hounded by doubt and fear. Indeed, such people will not only avoid the crippling devastation of Learned Helplessness, they will have Learned Optimism built into their lives. They can be expected to ooze peace and faith, but it is no achievement on their part. Nevertheless, our spiritual enemy will target his attacks on whatever are our most vulnerable areas. In the hope of conning us into thinking we are inferior Christians and less loved of God, he is keen to fill us with false shame and condemnation over having that area of vulnerability. Because it is true that “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31) the devil uses condemnation in a relentless attempt to undermine our faith in the extent to which God loves us, approves of us and is eager to support us. Unfortunately, having a childhood short on people who believed in us, unconditionally loved us and never let us down, makes it so much harder to believe that God is totally different to the people in our backgrounds who concreted our conception of what we can expect in life. Painstakingly chipping away at that concrete and building a conception of God that is totally contrary to all that life’s experiences taught us during our formative years is a mammoth task. What makes it so enormous is that to have full effect, this new belief needs to grow so strong that it seeps deep into even our subconscious. Our loving Lord understands what a long and laborious task this is and he is far more patient with us than most of us are with ourselves. He knows there are people who, through no virtue of their own, had a life that makes faith easier. And he is not duped into thinking their easy life makes them more worthy of his praise. Like a father beaming with joy at his little baby who is not yet able to stop dribbling and soiling itself, so God is far more proud of you than the devil wants you to realize. Nevertheless, the way out of our doubts and fears involves the hard grind of reshaping our thinking about God and his goodness, trustworthiness, passionate love for us and, through Christ’s astounding sacrifice, his approval of us. This comes through dwelling not on us and our unworthiness, nor the faults of others, but on God’s worthiness and the mind-boggling extent to which he loved us eons before we even thought of attempting to reciprocate. If ever, “to know him is to love him” applied to anyone, it applies to our wonderful Lord. Loving God not only has stupendous benefits for ourselves – just one of which is the breaking of fear – but it’s what God most wants from us: Matthew 22:37  . . . ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The endless joy can be yours of being thrillingly in love with the perfect Lover who will never tire of you, grow old or die. Like lust, fear is just a feeling. It comes to us all and seeks to enslave us. And like any addiction, the more we yield to it, the more we feel enslaved and it begins to feel (yes, another feeling) that resistance is useless. But Christians are called to live by faith, not feelings. For us, fear, demons and temptation are nothing but bluff. The battle can be tough – as it was for our Lord – but through him we are divine royalty who do not have to let anything enslave us any longer. We can walk free, but waiting for the unpleasant feeling to stop before doing so is like Peter waiting for the water to evaporate before stepping out of the boat. Peter walked on water because Jesus was with him (even though he could barely see him in the dark) and told him to come. Likewise, Jesus is with you asking you to walk with him, even though feelings of terror mock you. Let’s look at 2 Timothy 1:7 in two Bible versions: For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (King James Version) For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. (New International Version) Since neither fear, nor even being timid, is of God we do not have to submit to it. God’s antidote is the love and power that is ours through Christ. And to live in the power of God’s love and counteract a twisted slave mentality, we need a sound mind. This, too, is a gift from God but just as we must deny ourselves, take up our cross daily and follow Christ (Luke 9:23), a sound mind takes daily cooperation with Christ. In fact, it takes considerable mental self-discipline. Romans 12:2 Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will. What God wants for you is uncompromisingly, unsurpassably good, and to fully grasp this fact we must, in cooperation with God, renew our minds. Any lazy layabout can raise his/her level of physical fitness to the point of improved life expectancy but it takes persistent, determined effort. So it is with spiritual fitness. Whether you can is not in question, but it is up to you whether you put in the required effort. Nevertheless, it is not my intention to waste your time, my time and God’s time with hot air that merely leaves you feeling warm and gooey for the few minutes you have until cold reality smacks you. I can’t lose weight for you, but I could run with you. Likewise, I could take your hand and spend hours with you as you daily persist with the hard slog of rebuilding your view of God. I could stay for as long as it takes for you to realize you are in the safe arms of God 24/7 and are ever-so-slowly but surely changing from glory to glory. That’s why I have poured years into crafting the following webpages. Though only a fraction of my writings, they are carefully selected for their relevance to overcoming fear by building your view of God. If you are serious about change, save the web address of this page so you don’t lose the links and then commit to prayerfully reading them. There's Hope Forgiving Yourself God's Anti-depressant God Isn't Fair?