Journal: Latest Entries

Still it can be a struggle

I've been healing from the trauma of Child Sexual Abuse for years off and on. My work both personally and professionally has been to help others understand the impact of trauma and more recently to help people understand Dissociative Identity Disorder. My belief in my stregnth has been steadfast but recently I gave in to the pain of the past and took steps that could have killed me, but for the intervention of my partner. 

Its been an incredibly difficult experience and a very humbling one. With the work I have done around the country, in writing my book and now blogging for Psychology Today, I thought I was above the pain. I became complacent - thinking I'd never do anything to hurt myself. I didn't pay attention to the power of this pain and the memory of the past. So as my book comes out this fall. As happy a life as I have built for myself there are still painful memories that can take over - I am far from perfect, and will continue to struggle. 

The Sum of My Parts - A Memoir

My upcoming memoir, The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor’s Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder, emphasizes the healing process and the nature of resilience. These installments from Chapter One contain some descriptions of violence only for the purposes of illustrating why and how dissociative identity disorder is formed. Please take care in reading these installments.

If Someone You Know Was Sexually Abused As A Child - Part Two

Last week I described some of the ways that people helped me talk about what had happened to me as a child and by talking about it, begin the healing process. These people weren’t clinicians, they just wanted to help me: people like my husband, friends and co-workers.

As I mentioned last week I’m hoping you will think about these ideas, share them with the person in your life who has survived violence and ask him or her what might you do to help. Consider this a starting point to your discussion-–not an ending point.

If Someone You Know Has Been Sexually Abused as a Child

We all know and many of us are close to people who have survived child sexual abuse or rape. Chances are, many of you reading this are survivors yourself. We often encourage survivors to speak about their experiences, to get it out. It’s cathartic, it helps us to move through the pain, it helps us see that we’re not alone and that it wasn’t our fault.

We might not think as much about how to be on the receiving end of the story. What should we say? How do we talk with a survivor in a way that helps him or her heal a little bit more and feel okay about having told someone?

The six therapeutic tools I found most helpful

The more I think about it, the more I marvel at the skill of the psychiatrist who helped me heal from Dissociative Identity Disorder. As I look back on our work together, I can spot a number of creative strategies that he used.
Let’s call him Dr. Summer.

I don’t know whether Dr. Summer drew upon his experience working with other survivors of abuse or spontaneously invented some tools in his work with me. Some of these techniques must have been specific to my circumstances, and should be understood in that context before adapted to others. Here are the tools I found most helpful.

Dissociating is like watching your life from 50 feet off the ground

In order for me to learn how to stop dissociating, I first had to figure out when I was doing it. I had to recognize how it felt and learn to see the difference in how I felt when I wasn’t dissociating.

My psychiatrist gently guided me through this process. He often stopped me whenever he saw that spaced-out look on my face. “How do you feel?” he would ask. I described to him the numbness and fog that had overtaken my thinking, a sensation like having cotton in my head. “That’s what dissociation feels like. Try and remember that feeling,” he instructed me. After several months of stopping and noticing, I eventually got the distinction. It’s like the difference between looking at life from 50 feet up versus living life at ground level, with all its vivid emotions and bumpy reality.

The Unraveling: DID and Me

When I first found out I had Dissociative Identity Disorder I was devastated. I was afraid of people finding out, thought perhaps I would lose my job. I was afraid my husband would leave me. I thought the diagnosis meant I was truly 'crazy'. I suddenly wanted my old life back—the one I had before I started having panic attacks and memories of being sexually abused as a child, adolescent and young adult.

Letting Yourself Go

After years of healing the abuse I suffered as a child and adolescent, I still found that I was emotionally unavailable at times. I've worked very hard at letting myself go and letting people in. I've worked on this in my relationship with my partner and in my friendships. I notice when I'm distant and figure out why and then work through the anxiety or worry that is almost always involved to let go of whatever fear has come up for me. I've been really successful at letting myself go and letting people in to my life. It's been an amazing experience to feel so connected to people.

Examining the Impact of Reaching In

One of the things that made my healing so successful was working with a psychiatrist that understood that reaching in could be harmful. He knew that reaching into my mind to pull out  the details of a particular attack from my memory could feel like a re-victimization. He knew that reaching in would erode my trust in him and could take me somewhere I wasn't ready to go.

Sum Of My Parts - A Memoir

The Sum of My Parts is a memoir I have been writing since last February. It's about how I developed Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID, discovered I had it and then details the healing process. In the book I go into more detail than I have in any of the trainings or presentations I have conducted. 

The story is hopeful in that it shows how so many kind people came into my life and connected with me in seemingly simple but meaningful ways. In order to bring out the importance of how such small acts of kindness could be so powerful I needed to tell about some of the abuse I suffered to lay a context for the resilience these people helped build in me. It also shows why the coping mechanism of DID was so effective for me to survive the terror of our home and still function well in school, with friends, sports and other healthy activities.

The story winds you through what it felt like to divide up and be divided. It illustrates how vulnerable I was as an adolescent and young adult because of the dissociation I had come to rely on to keep the truth of our home away from my consciousness and to not feel the fear and danger that always loomed.

Finally, I recount how I got through college, law school and reached a high level of success professionally. I married and felt safest I'd had ever felt. Soon thereafter started the panic attacks that led me to seek therapeutic help. This book details how I learned about the DID and healed from it. How I became more whole than I had ever been and happier than I thought I could.

This book takes my presentations and trainings and lets you into what you want to know - how I got from there to here. The book is currently scheduled for release in November 2011 by New Harbinger Press. If you would like to keep up with the latest updates sign up on this website for book updates. Or you can pre-order a signed copy of the book in the shop of this website. Amazon.com is also selling pre-orders.