It’s Thanksgiving weekend here in the US, and besides the wonderful traditional family meal and pleasant times with my kids, this time frame reminds me of something else. Discussing Dissociation has been up and visible for nearly one year now. Yep, in a few days, it will be a year already! Wow. Where has the time gone??!!! There is truth to the saying that time flies, or is it because time flies when … [Read more...]
DID Trauma Survivors and Getting Support from Other People – or not?
Dissociative trauma survivors need emotional support. However, this can be difficult to achieve. As the show, "United States of Tara" is gradually starting to demonstrate, survivors with Dissociative Identity Disorder have friends and family members that offer varying levels of support: Those that find dissociative trauma survivors to be really good, kind, decent, and wonderful people, and will stand by them … [Read more...]
Using Collage as a Way of Communicating
Creating a collage is another way of allowing your internal system parts to tell more about themselves. Pictures can be a powerful way of communicating. And a collage - a collection of pictures - can tell a lifetime of stories. Most trauma survivors were repeatedly told by their abusers, "Do not tell". Violence, threats, abuse, and pain often accompanied these rules. How many times did you hear "don't say … [Read more...]
Internal Communication – The Core of Treatment for Dissociative Identity Disorder
Continuing with the topic of Internal Communication, I ended the previous article, Overcoming Instability Issues and Unsuccessful Memory work with this list of Dissoci-ACTION steps: Focus first on relationship building with your parts. Get to know them. Talk to them. Learn their names. Overcome your fears of who they are. Appreciate their strengths. Develop friendships with them. I … [Read more...]
25 Ways to Avoid Self-Injury and Prevent Self-Harm
Survivors of sexual abuse often struggle with self-injury (SI). Survivors often use dissociative walls to contain and separate intense emotions from themselves. This allows them to stay numb, and to not feel. They can split off their unmanageable, uncomfortable, or conflicting feelings into other parts of themselves, as frequently seen in Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID/MPD). As those dissociative walls … [Read more...]