PTSD Awareness Day 2024 is on Thursday, June 27, 2024: How do sex abuse survivors with PTSD and multiple personalitites cope and heal?

Thursday, June 27, 2024 is PTSD Awareness Day 2024. PTSD Awareness Day - VA Puget Sound Health Care System ptsd awareness day logo

Sponsored Deals

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

I do believe that integration is the eventual goal in therapy with folks for DID as I see anything less than that as settling for less than a person deserves, though I respect the choices people make as to how far they wish to go in therapy. But integration most certainly is possible.

Initially I focus on contracting to decrease overtly self-destructive behavior in order to allow therapy to proceed. This contracting can take weeks or months before all parts are willing to get on board and suspend overtly self-destructive behavior as there is usually a lack of understanding by each part that what they do effects all parts. Safety of the body has to come first before other work takes place in order to avoid hospitalization or injury which will only delay and interfere with therapy.

The first step in therapy then is always establishing communication between alter parts. Sometimes this happens initially through a journal where each part can write or post comments to a question. Once there has been some initial communication and awareness of other parts, communication is fostered through developing co-consciousness which is the ability for one part to stay "present" while another part or parts are dominant. Mainly, this involves a willingness to stay and resist the desire to dissociate. The greater the degree of co-consciousness, the less amnesia there is and the less confusion the person experiences.

The next step is to facilitate cooperation between parts and decrease the internal struggles and battles for control which lead to disorganized behavior and inconsistency in relationships. This often is somewhat like family therapy and the basic tenet is to encourage openess to understanding the perspectives and needs of other parts within the system. The most important thing here is to encourage respect for other parts-it is also one of the most difficult aspects of the therapy as negative attitudes by the host personality toward other parts is generally the source of most conflict. The other parts' behaviors are interpreted out of context and are often perceived by the host as destructive or persecutory. Other parts often are angry with the host and see the host as weak and dependent. It's my experience that persecutor alters are every bit as valuable and important and necessary to the system and are really protector parts in disguise, no matter how horrendous or destructive their behavior may appear at first on the surface. This step is crucial, as communication will shut down and no further work will take place without establishing respect between alters and a willingness and desire to learn from one another. Each alter offers unique coping strategies and needs to be honored for the role they played in the system's survival. Initial cooperation and collaboration among alters may begin with simply negotiating things like who has time out in the body and when. Clearly, a degree of respect needs to precede this in order to facilitate the trust necessary to allow alters to voluntarily take control. This also diminishes the severe headaches which usually result from switching struggles.

Once there has been a level of communication and cooperation established, the next step is to facilitate sharing of memories across alters which further reduces the amnesia barrier. It also results in the transfer of skills between parts and a dramatic increase in empathy for what each part experienced and the contribution they made to survival. The greatest roadblock to accomplishing this step is usually host resistance, as the host is reluctant to accept the dissociated memories and the attendant emotional pain and they must become committed to the goal of accepting the other parts of themselves and owning the experiences and the pain. This leads to integration.

When alters integrate by sharing the emotiona and the memory, they never actually leave or disappear-they simply cease to exist as separate. This is key as no part is ever eliminated (which sometimes is what the host personality strives to do-trying to destroy or suppress a part is a negative barrier and not possible either) as each is equally crucial to the person's evolving sense of self. Other alters fear loss of independence and uniqueness and their role and often resist too at this stage until the concept is fully understood. Acceptance of all parts directly results in integration. All of these fears of loss of separateness, loss of coping by dissociation need to be processed to facilitate this stage.

The last stage is usually grieving with all the anger, sadness and feelings that come with owning the experiences of horrific abuse, and sometimes worse, the emotional neglect. Grieving the loss of the parents you never had is the most apt phrase I've ever heard and is credited to Colin Ross, the guru in treatment of DID.

Finally there is a resolution phase, where as clients call it, they adjust to being a "monomind" and coping with new experiences without the use of dissociation or other ways of avoiding affect (like alcohol, drugs, self-mutilation, rage episodes or other forms of acting out) and they practice and solidify the coping mechanisms they have been learning throughout therapy.

Hope this helps explain the process. Again, just a reminder-DID and PTSD are among the only psychiatric disorders which can be truly "cured" and also do not depend on meds for management of symptoms.

Best of luck!

How far off the rocker are people who have PTSD?

Humankind is just now evolving to a range of awareness that it realizes a call-and-response property applies to everything in nature; that nothing imported goes without a corresponding export; that an imported signature of some particular instance bears an express if inverse signature of energy in turn.

Just think about the many cultures who over the decades and centuries have undergone all manner of protracted traumas, then ask why might they exhibit patterns and tendencies that some of us might find disquieting or, say, exotic.

Dr. Alvin Poussant, a professor of Psychiatry at Harvard University, gives example of this as regards slavery vis a vis African Americans, in which he states that PTSD had as readily be abbreviation for Post Traumatic Slavery Syndrome, in that a syndrome implies or means "many symptoms," and that African Americans underwent untold traumas for a span of 400 years, which symptoms ensue to this very day -- passed down from generation to generation. We can apply the term to many conditions, whose expressions are possibly legion. Take, for example, the child who is the product of a violent family upbringing -- might we believe that that child will not bear some form of neurotic or some other debilitating tendencies?

And what of a household pet in which the owner treats the animal meanly since its puppy hood. Rest assured that that dog later is likely to become a vicious creature. And even regarding mechanical objects and systems, there was a maxim used in the computer field that said, "Garbage in, garbage out."

And so, as regards PTSD, whatever is the cause and resulting effects and expressions, the condition is real. And we are just now awakening to this whereas before we discounted the likes of PTSD, believing that the sufferers of it were malingering, for which people in past decades were once led to make coltish, burlesque comments about them.

Anyone who undergoes some extreme or protracted stress is subject to display any number of intense or erratic reactions. Why? Well, 'because he or she or it is a sentient being, meant to be made whole, not corrupted.

PTSD from near fatal overdose?

You need to keep away from the creeps who supply to you. Just learn to say 'no' to people who want to harm you by supplying drugs to you. There are a lot of people in the world who don't have your best interests at heart and can do you a lot of harm. Tell yourself you deserve better.Tell them if they come near you again you will report them to the police. You need to find something in your life to aim for that you want more than the drugs. Maybe a trip away somewhere new. Stay in a backpackers and meet new people. Take up a new hobby like tramping, cycling, art, photography, or whatever. Get natural highs from all the positive things in the world that won't destroy you. It is a beautiful world out there! Enjoy!

You need to learn life skills and how to block out all the negativity in the world. Go on courses or buy books on how to build your self confidence. And go on a Drug Awareness Course. Tell yourself that you are a good person and that you deserve to be happy. Here are some websites where you will get support and good mentors: (hugs xxx)