Hi, This is Easter weekend. For DID trauma survivors with a ritual abuse (RA) background, this is a very difficult weekend, full of difficult memories, painful emotions, and system conflicts. *** I’m going to speak of some of the horrors of ritual abuse – here is your trigger warning – for those of you that need one of those. *** With ritual abuse, anything that represented something … [Read more...]
Attachment to the Perpetrator
I saw another television documentary on Jaycee Lee Dugard - the young woman who was kidnapped at age 11, held captive for 18 years, and found alive, along with her two daughters on August 26, 2009. At the time of the documentary, Jaycee was about 40 years old. Jaycee spent 18 years held captive in the backyard of a registered, violent sex offender, Phillip Garrido. Garrido fathered Jaycee's two daughters, … [Read more...]
The Layers of Halloween Weekend
It’s Halloween weekend. This is a difficult, heavy weekend for a lot of dissociative trauma survivors. I’ll say right upfront – and please hear this clearly -- that it is NOT a difficult or triggery weekend for every DID trauma survivor. To assume that every dissociative survivor has experienced the same kinds of abuse is completely wrong, and I will be the first trauma therapist to say that not everyone … [Read more...]
Remembering Annemaria
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...]
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...]
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