Last week, I couldn’t find the words to write about the struggles that so many dissociative survivors have on Mother’s Day. In response to that, a dissociative survivor emailed me, and has given me permission to post their thoughts about the painful side of Mother’s Day. Maybe you will relate to these difficult thoughts and painful feelings. Every year on Mother’s Day we as a society get … [Read more...]
Turning Self-Injury into Self-Soothing
Self-injury is a problem all too common for trauma survivors with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID / MPD) or Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). For that matter, self-injury (SI) is an issue for other populations of people as well. This discussion will focus more on the effects of trauma and abuse and how self-injury can be addressed effectively. However, because self-injury is actually a very … [Read more...]
Picturing the Healing Process for Dissociative Identity Disorder
This set of picture-postcards demonstrates a passage through time for a trauma survivor with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID / MPD). These pictures show different phases of the dissociative healing process, and illustrate how healing occurs. Notice that they move from a more shattered, painful, chaotic place to a calmer, structured, organized place. Where there is originally nothing but a fragmented … [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...]
25 More Ways to Avoid Self-Injury and Prevent Self-Harm
. This blog is a continuation of the initial article posted on December 31, 2008, "25 Ways to Avoid Self-Injury and Prevent Self-Harm." If you are feeling pressured to get past the "heat of the moment" and you need some ideas of how to do this safely, try using a handful of the following ideas. These ideas will not help solve your self-injury issue on a long-term basis, but they could help you to get … [Read more...]