There is a young woman who will always be precious to me. I haven’t spoken to her in years, but she forever changed my life. Just in being herself, Annemaria gave me my very first introduction to Dissociative Disorders. She changed my life. Absolutely and completely. This date – October 23rd -- had specific meaning for her. And every year on this date, I specifically think of her. The story … [Read more...]
20 Types of Dissociative Splits
It always amazes me when dissociative trauma survivors tell me that after they've met three or four of their inside alters (or maybe even a few more than that, but not many), that they think they've met everyone in their system. They think they don't have that many dissociative splits in their DID system, or they think that they are "done" meeting their insiders. That never makes sense to me. Oh, I … [Read more...]
Being Hated, Feeling Hated, Overcoming Self-Hatred
Practically every dissociative trauma survivor that I have spoken to has said to me that at some point in time or another, they have felt hated, truly hated. What's worse, they didn't feel hated by strangers -- they felt hated by their loved ones. These trauma survivors felt hated by their mothers, their fathers, their siblings, their spouses, their children, their friends. They felt hatred from the … [Read more...]
Split Decisions
When you have Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID or DID/MPD), and you’re thinking as a multiple personality -- thus having a multitude of different thoughts at once time -- it can be very difficult to make decisions. How do survivors with DID ever make up their minds? How do survivors with DID decide whose opinion to follow? How do survivors with DID ever decide what is best for … [Read more...]
Abandonment — A Painful, Tender Hurt for Dissociative Trauma Survivors
Abandonment is such a tender issue for trauma survivors. Most survivors with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID/MPD) and Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have had more than their fair share of genuine abandonment instances. For severe trauma survivors, abandonment would have been experienced over and over in various situations: Each time your parents or caregivers turned a blind eye to the sexual abuse … [Read more...]