Freedom to be you.

Do you know who you are, or what you stand for?  
Do you know what you believe, and what you think?
Do you agree with other voices, just because they speak strongly?
Do you find ways to be true to yourself, despite the pressure otherwise?

Are you different from the people around you?
If you are, is that okay?

We hear the phrase “You do you” all too many times.  This little catch-phrase is sometimes well-received, sometimes not.  Do you use that phrase?  It often comes across as an insult or a put-down, but in reality, we do need the freedom to be ourselves.  You don’t gotta be anyone but yourself.  And you get to decide what that means for you.  Even as a dissociative system, you get to decide as a whole, what y’all stand for and what y’all believe.

• Have you had anyone try to make you be someone you’re not?
• Have you had anyone pressure or force you to believe something you didn’t believe?
• Has anyone been angry at you for standing up for what you believe, when it is different from what they believe?
• Can you hold onto your own beliefs despite these outward pressures, and can you keep your own sense of internal peace?

Tough questions.  These situations can get really dicey sometimes.  For some people, these situations have been fully traumatic and life-changing.

 

Splitting Insiders to Hold Beliefs

Throughout my years of listening to dissociative survivors, there are various themes that are frequently repeated.  Being shoved into situations where people are forced to act opposite to their own beliefs, and forced to act on those not-beliefs is a common traumatic event for the DID population.  Perpetrator groups, abusive parents, cult groups, trafficking networks, etc use those tactics.  In these scenarios, the traumatized person is typically outnumbered, out-powered, humiliated, abused, manipulated and held captive in a highly controlled space until they act in the way the power people demand.  

Anyone can be forced to do the unthinkable, especially children, and especially when the power people don’t fight fair.  Not only do they not fight fair, they often use various tools of harm, specifically hurting and abusing the person while making the less powerful person express allegiance to the opposite.  I won’t go into details here, but perpetrators who force belief systems can be cruel. This practice is not right, and it’s not okay, yet sadly, it happens.

For dissociative systems, this usually requires someone(s) to specifically split off from rest of the system to hold these required behaviors and beliefs.  If the task is too distinctly different from what you feel is right in your soul and spirit, and if your brain knows how to dissociate and split, that can feel like a welcome solution to the trauma at the time.

The longer those parts are then separated away, held captive by abuser groups, and repeatedly forced to act/believe in certain ways, the more freedom gets stripped away from the dissociative system. The freedom to choose is stolen from them.  Don’t hate them for being trapped. What option did they have?

Having personal beliefs separate from those forced beliefs creates deep internal chasms splits within the dissociative system.  Having to be who you are not is not an easy task!  The internal roads split further apart, and eventually the two sides of the system are very opposite from each other.  If both sides are required, then both sides of the system continue to exist.  Sometimes for years or decades of time.

Survival is maintained, but freedom is lost.

 

Freedom?  Where’s the freedom?

Oh, it’s a ton of hard work to extricate yourself from a power group with abusive coercive controls.  Many times these groups don’t fight fair, they have more money, more resources, more drugs, more tools, more resources, more control than you do. They may have more ways to manipulate your thinking than you realize.  It’s a big fight to find a way out.

It’s a big struggle to even find the door, or to find anyone who will support your journey out, or to find a place to be away from the abusers.  These safe resources are growing, but they are hard to find.

A big part of the work is first daring to step out. Dare to think-out. Think differently.  Believe that what you believe and stand for is more valid and more important than what the power-group stands for.  If you don’t want your life to be a reflection of their controls and their values, how can you change that?  Are you willing to do what it takes to get the freedom you need?  

Having a history of abuse doesn’t get to be the final say in who you are!  Or what you do, or what you believe.  

Having creeps or perps or bullies who said horrible things about you, or to you, doesn’t mean they said truth. They may have been forceful in their words, and they may have believed it themselves.  Even so, no matter how loud those ugly voices are, they can still be as wrong, wrong, wrong as wrong can be.  You don’t have to agree.  They have the right to be wrong! 

Choosing your own beliefs sounds good — and it’s extremely important — but this path will not be easy.  There are many obstacles to getting freedom from what has become “the norm” in your life if you’ve grown up with abusers.  

What you accept to believe as truth about you will impact your life in every single way.

 

Who are you anyway?  

After spending chunks of time with a dominant abuser group, that influence is going to impact you.   For groups where official mind control techniques were used it’s even hard to pull yourself out of the mix that you were forced to be in.  This article isn’t about how to literally get out of your cult group / trafficking network.  That would take volumes of writing.

Let’s start with something more simple:   Do you think differently from your perpetrators?  Do you want to behave differently from your abusers?  Are you the same as them, or different from them?

Challenge yourself to figure out who you, despite the pressures and previous requirements to conform to other beliefs.   Do you have to be who you were forced to be?   Or can you have a different way of life?  What values do you agree with?   How do you want your life to be?  What behaviors do you want to have in your life?  What do you refuse to do, once you have the freedom to say no?

These actually are complex questions, and may not have simple straightforward answers.  However.  Give yourself the freedom to really think about what matters to you.  It might take a while to figure this out, but give yourself the freedom to consider being / becoming who you truly want to be.
 

And for dissociative systems, who are your people?  

Who are your people?  What do they stand for?
Do they share the same heart, and values as you?  Do you have overall “this is us” agreements, in terms of what the whole of you believes about who you are?

Do your insiders have to stay locked into the roles they were given by abusers?  Do they get to find safety and freedom outside of the torments they lived through?  I most certainly encourage you to allow the whole of your system to find freedom to be their best selves too.  

For folks with DID, healing involves finding ways for the entire system to have the freedom to be who they want to be.  Not staying locked into what they were forced to do under duress, but actively becoming who they are, in the depths of their innermost self.

And… when they struggle (because they will!), do you accept your insiders?  Do you see them as valuable parts of you, as valuable pieces of your life, as important members of your system?  Do you discount them, or do you treasure them?  Your treating your inner selves with an overall framework of kindness, respect, gentleness, acceptance, understanding, patience, and friendship will go a long ways in helping them overcoming the lies that were told to them by outside people.

 

Let’s work through an example.

Let’s say you were taught to believe all kinds of ugly things about yourself or your insiders.  You may have been told far too many horrible things.  People may have bullied you.  You may have been viciously attacked in a hate crime.  What if you were attacked, or assaulted once, or maybe a 100 times?  You might have grown up in a cult, or maybe sold in a trafficking network.  Or maybe your parents were just mean.  And to make it worse, let’s say in this example, your bio-dad was one of the creeps who hurt you.  Ugh.  Any of these situations are all too familiar scenarios for those with dissociative identity disorder (DID).

So would you challenge those horrible things that were said to you?   

What do you know about yourself that is good?  Strong?  Kind?

Who do you want to be (which will likely be very very different from who they said you were)?  Can you remove or erase or replace the words you heard during trauma, and think who you want to be, if you had been left alone to just be yourself?

What are your personal beliefs?  What are your spiritual beliefs?  What do your real friends say about you?  What does your therapist say about you?

Can you get positive feedback from outside sources?  It’s good if you can.  But that’s only a starting place.

The main goal here is to have the strength of knowing from inside yourself.  Know who you are.  Know what you believe in.  Know what you stand for.  So no matter what smack gets thrown at you, you know you.  What they say doesn’t matter, because it’s not the truth.  Know the difference between lies and truth. Oh, I’m not saying the trash-talk doesn’t make scars — of course it does.  But it’s still trash-talk.  It’s not the truth.  Know a lie when you hear one, and don’t be tricked into believing the negative.

Find that strength in yourself.  Find that grace to be yourself, especially when you are different from all the noisier nasty voices around you.

The song below demonstrates this principle well.  Music is so powerful — maybe the words in this song will reach and inspire you in a way that my writing cannot.

First — my “trigger warning”.  The video inserted below, “The Truth” by Megan Woods is a faith-based song.  It speaks about not listening to the lies anymore, and belonging to a Heavenly Father, not any earthly father, especially not a abusive father.  Be prepared to hear those kinds of lyrics, but the real point of me sharing this song is that it talks about someone’s journey of figuring out who they are, separate from the lies they’ve been told.

 

 

The line “I don’t want to listen to the lies anymore” is a very strong starting point.

Add in, “I don’t belong to the lies….”    

Followed up with. “I know who I am….”  

Think about those words and phrases.  What is the truth about you and your system? Challenge yourselves here to seriously not listen to the lies that have been said about you.  Don’t listen to the junk-talk.  Don’t believe the cruddy words.  Those are the lies.  Know the truth about the beauty of you.  

This takes a lot of work, for sure.  I’m not saying it’s easy.  I’m saying it’s crucial to know the difference between the lies you were told and the truth of who you are.

Need another inspirational song?  How about a little more encouragement to start thinking more positively about yourself and your people.

Try this one:

“You Say” by Lauren Daigle, also faith-based, but wow.  Have a listen to these words.  It’s about believing the positive, instead of the negative.

 

Hold tight to your freedom to be you.

Yep, this is something to treasure.   I know it’s hard, but let’s work on this.  Chances are, you are probably a truly awesome person.  Your system is probably fantastic.   Y’all will have all kinds of cool things about you!  You’ll be unique and you don’t have to be like anyone else.  

Find your strengths and refuse to let the old ugly negative lies sink in.  Push those nasty words out of your head, and replace that space with something more positive or encouraging.  It can make all the difference.  

You have the freedom to be you.

 

I wish you the best in your healing journey — hold tight to the truth about yourself!  No more listening to those ugly lies.  Be the truth of who you are.

Warmly,

Kathy 

 

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