I always thought it was normal to hear voices in one's head. I always thought it was normal to have imaginary companions--it just wasn't normal to talk about them.
In September, 1996, I began to realize that it was not normal ... and I was terrified. I wasn't Sybil. I wasn't anything like Sybil. I never woke up and realized that it was days since I last knew what had been happening around me. I never told people my name was anything other than my legal name. But sometimes I missed a few minutes, and sometimes I didn't have the same attitude about a situation that I had had the day before. Sometimes I would have been much more comfortable if I was one of the characters I had created for stories. In fact, sometimes I went through the motions of life as if I was one of them. Sometimes I did this so well that I felt that I could sit back and watch while they lived my life for me, like watching a movie.
I don't know how long I have been doing this. I have distinct memories of being aware that my imaginary companions were not just "pretend" when I was nine years old. A friend once said that I told her, "Sometimes I watch myself," when I was ten. For me, this was part of everyday life.
In 1996, I became disturbed by this. I had learned what dissociation was, and I also knew that it was caused by severe or prolonged child abuse. I was not abused. Not in the way that other people I knew were. My parents took an active role in my education from the time I was very young. They were not overly strict and did not force their beliefs down my throat. They allowed and even encouraged me to make my own spiritual choices and answered my questions as honestly as they could. There were times during my childhood when they worked long hours, but this was necessary and I was rarely upset by it. The only odd thing about my childhood was the fact that I did not have neighborhood friends. The other children showed little interest in playing with me. I assumed it was because I was blind.
I later learned that there are many kinds of abuse and that each person may or may not be able to tolerate abuse and other emotional and physical traumas based on a number of factors. I have spent the years since then learning about why I am vulnerable to emotional pain and how I can improve my coping skills. As you will learn through reading this site, I do not believe that dissociation is altogether bad. It is a way I have learned to cope with things as well as the way I, personally, understand myself. I do not do well with whole-to-part relationships. Instead, I understand the parts of things and only through combining them do I understand the whole. This includes myself. Each person I see in my mind is a piece of myself. As I began to relate to, understand, and (eventually) share in the experiences of these pieces of myself, I was taking steps toward wholeness. In fact, I am still taking steps toward wholeness; for Christ has begun a good work in me, and he will be faithful to complete it!
I know that many people struggle with more severe forms of dissociation than what I have experienced. I believe that this and other trauma-based disorders are very treatable and that much suffering can be alleviated. This depends on a number of factors working together: compatibility of client and therapist personalities, readiness of the client for therapy, applicability of therapeutic technique to the given situation, therapist's knowledge of the particular problem, etc.
As I stated above, I thought that what I was experiencing was normal. I thought it was so normal that I did not realize what it was for a long time. Looking back, I know that my mind was full of faces, voices, and names for as long as I can remember. Other people called me by my legal name, so to them that is who I was. In my mind I was whoever was talking at a given moment. To me this was not a problem. I was fully aware of the difference between the selves in my mind and the name that people associated with my body. I had dialogues with myself in this way, sorted through thoughts and feelings, acknowledged my emotional pain, etc. The person who I was to everyone else was someone very different from the person I usually perceived myself to be. That perception often changed, but it was rarely equivalent to who I thought other people perceived me to be.
In 1986, I was tested for epilepsy because of experiences I was having during which I would "space out" or become confused. During these experiences my orientation to the environment was often reversed. I experienced a delay in responding to things like the ringing of the telephone, not really knowing what the ringing was but wanting to make it stop. I sometimes became very emotional, and I even fell down stairs because I had spaced out and lost my balance.
No seizure activity was found, and the episodes were assumed to be stress-related. I learned later that there were three possible explanations for the episodes: complex partial seizures, migraine-related symptoms, and dissociation. Now that I am aware of the fact that I am a dissociator and have made the effort to get to know the various parts of myself, I believe that these particular experiences are not attributable to dissociation.
Many doctors dismiss the symptoms of patients who have a normal EEG as dissociation or stress-related symptoms and advise them to seek psychiatric help. One of the things which convinced me that the symptoms were physiological in nature is the amount of progress I have made in therapy and the changes in my dissociative tendencies. I have dissociated less and less, but the disorientation and confusion have remained somewhat predictable. I began keeping track of foods I ate and other factors which seemed to "trigger" the episodes, and I eventually came to suspect that they may be related to my migraines. However, getting the migraines under control also did not change the frequency of symptoms. Antiepileptics did; and the road to appropriate treatment was very long. Treatment with nutritional supplements, aromatherapy, and herbal remedies resulted in marked improvement in the frequency of the symptoms; but treatment with Topamax resulted in a near-complete improvement.
I have discussed this problem because it was probably one of the first indicators that something was wrong and didn't have an explanation as simple as "normal teenage problems". The moodiness which had disturbed me since age 12 had been dismissed by family members as normal. It was not normal, but I believe that most of those family members were afraid of the implications of what I was experiencing. I was a troubled child, and our family was not supposed to have troubled children.
Despite these early warnings, it was not until 1994 that there was any hint of something being wrong again. I was dating a man who was much older than myself at the time. Our relationship did not work out for a number of reasons. One of those reasons was his inability to handle my moodiness. "You're unstable," he told me. "You turn your emotions on and off. Sometimes it's like you're two different people."
He was not the only person to tell me this. The problem reappeared in my next relationship, a dating relationship which led ultimately to marriage.
The marriage was not happy, and both of us were to blame for that. My emotional problems were escallating and manifest themselves in all kinds of ways. Many of my friendships were codependent, and I had begun to experience an alarming increase in the frequency of my dissociative episodes. I also experienced sexual difficulties which neither of us felt was normal.
When I discovered my voices, faces and names were not normal but were something other people experienced, I sought help from those people. Some of those people were good supporters; some were not. My husband was frightened by the concept of dissociation, and my lack of knowledge regarding how to cope and how to build an effective support system intensified the problem. Furthermore, I was seeing a therapist who was incompatible with me and more concerned with making the dissociation stop than with addressing the reasons for it. I have never believed and never will believe that this is an appropriate method of working with a dissociator. My experience is that as I learn new ways of coping with emotions and distress, I employ them instead of dissociation. I still find that I use dissociation in many instances, but I am finding that I use it in a more healthy way along with my newly found coping skills.
Throughout these pages you will read about my personal experience of coming to terms with dissociation and the traumatic events of my past. If you are a person who dissociates and you are troubled or frightened by the experience, I hope that reading about my experiences serves as an encouragement to you and that you are able to take your own steps toward healing, perhaps using some of the resources provided here. If you are not a dissociator, I hope that reading about my experiences will at least be enlightening. I share them not because I want personal support or attention but because I think it's important for people to understand that dissociation is not just an abused person's coping mechanism. It is a coping mechanism used by people with any number of past histories; and that's something I want society to understand. If you are the friend or family member of someone who dissociates, or even if you are a therapist, some of the resources here may help you to open some discussions with the person about his/her needs. (Yes, men dissociate, too.)
As I said, I did not have many resources at my disposal to help me get my healing journey off to a good start. At the bottom of most pages, I will provide links to helpful resources I have found along the way. Perhaps they will save someone else the struggles I have been through. Links displayed in bold lead to helpful sites on the Internet. Links displayed in italics allow you to purchase the item described by clicking on the link title.
If you have just discovered that you are a dissociator, the following resources may be helpful to you.
What is DID?
A survivor of ritual abuse shares the clinical definition of DID and some perspectives about living with it. This is a good brief overview of controversies in the professional community as well as personal perspective which is important to understand.
Adult Children of Abusive Parents: A Healing Program for Those Who Have Been Physically, Sexually, or Emotionally Abused
This book provides a christian perspective for healing from childhood abuse, including nonphysical abuse.
Living With Your Selves: A Survival Manual for People With Multiple Personality Disorder
This is an excellent little book written by someone with DID. It has a lot of information about what DID/MPD is and how to get your selves working together, as well as some listings of additional resources in the back.
Your Inner Child of the Past
This is the original work on the inner child concept. I was very hesitant to get into this book because I thought that the concept conflicted with my faith. After I started reading it, I realized that there is nothing bad about this concept. The inner child does not replace God but represents a lot of old messages and values I never let go. In my case, I was dealing with not one but many inner children, and reading this book helped me to understand them much better and to begin to work with them so that my life became much easier.
The Highly Sensitive Person: How to Thrive When the World Overwhelms You
This book addresses not only how to cope as a person who is very sensitive to life's experiences but also how that sensitivity may develop. It is one of the most validating things I have read.