The backwards world

It's known that organized abusers create great confusion in our subconscious worlds because confusion is one of those emotions that makes it easier for their messages to sink in. Fear, shock, confusion, dizziness, drugged. I've had difficulty for years with simply identification of left and right, forwards and backwards, up and down, among others. Tyler still struggles with the backwards language he was exposed to when he was 4 to 5 years old.

Jane (birth child me) and me (the entity with the healed alters) recently integrated. I have been staying up so late for months now. It dawned on me that maybe Jane has a different schedule. I spoke to her internally about a week ago about my need to get to bed about midnight but maybe we could start with just an hour earlier. She agreed that was a good idea. What happened is I have been staying up until 3 or nearly 4 for several days. Today I realized Jane is from the backwards world so my request for earlier translated to later. I think she understands now. Not sure what is involved for her to undo her language to adjust to current life.

It's been interesting. She is my writer and likely has been since second grade. Had always felt my writing came from another place inside me. That is not unusual for any writer though. We call it being in the flow when words just pour out of us. I'm so tired and must sleep but here I am writing. Think I'll try to take charge or work inside to go to bed before 3 a.m.

Can't wait for the United States of Tara for others to say, "Oh, that's what Grace must have been like!" I didn't change my clothes throughout the day if I happened to switch though. Since I don't know when I switched before September '97, who knows. Interesting life.

I also think Jane's "inner child" littles are a bit terrified of their first Christmas "out". They may need to see that all is safe so next year can be a good holiday. Am really fighting the whole Christmas concept this year. Hope to wake up tomorrow with sufficient spirit and energy to work on gift wrapping. It really needs to be done. Maybe Jane will move back and let me wrap...or allow littles to make sure the gift bags are safe and play with the ribbon.

"The United States of Tara"

A new Showtime series is airing January 18, The United States of Tara. The premise is a family with two teenagers. Mom is a multiple. She has DID. Dissociative Identity Disorder a/k/a dissociative states. Tara, in the previews, has several personalities. Her husband, who I know as the radio guy from Northern Exposure (John Corbett), and both teens (a boy and girl) understand mom has issues and that environmental and internal triggers (out of the family's control) cause her to change to a different identity.

The show acknowledges that Tara has deep seated issues and DID is her coping skill. The family embraces her differences and helps each other. The kids know the alters by name because each has a different voice and facial expression. On the show, Tara also changes clothes when she is someone else. That does happen for some survivors. I recall having wardrobe changes because I felt differently. I guess I never consciously experienced myself feeling like a guy though. I never felt frilly feminine. I don't see the wardrobe change as detracting from the message of the show.

The more I learn about the show, the more I believe there will finally be an accurate representation of the issues of someone having DID and normalizing that difference. Mom is different and interesting to the kids. They love her and all of her personas. I have learned an expert advisor for DID is a consultant. I know the individual to be a highly respected psychiatrist in the field of dissociation. I prefer to wait to see his name in the credits than disclose here.

While I'm sure some sacrifices had to be made for entertainment purposes, the show promises to balance the humorous and possibly exasperating side of loving someone with DID with the serious issues that lie behind anyone with DID. To hear the cast and writers speak of multiplicity and DID with appropriate terms was heartwarming. But not as much as knowing so many will likely watch the show. I wish with all my heart and soul many will finally see and hear the reality of DID. It is not to be feared but to be embraced. More than anything, those with DID desire connection and acceptance.

Hopefully the show will inspire discussion in many forums on the internet and television. Bless you, Steve Spielberg. Click here for a quick preview. If you are a Dexter fan or otherwise have access to Showtime, longer promotional previews of the show are being shown frequently and are excellent.

The "never again" lie

This morning I was watching The Today Show. One of the guests was a star of the movie Valkyrie about the Nazis who plotted to assassinate Hitler. The guest indicated he had not been aware of that piece of history. History tends to portray all Nazis under one banner. Yet some did see the country being ruled by an insane ruler leading the holocaust and "ethnic cleansing" with all in fear of speaking out or acting against him.

All I could think about was how the world of child predators is so similar. The motivation is the perversion of pedophilia as well as control. Secrecy is paramount. Anyone speaking out against the crimes is insane or made to fear for their life. I walk a fine line with my blogs. I need people to hear the reality and not think "conspiracy theory". The powerful people behind the great money earning industry of kiddie porn and child exploitation have much to lose if society truly starts to protect the children at their level. Reputations of some of the country's "finest citizens" would come tumbling down.

Where is the holocaust? Not in terms of death, but in terms of victims, all children born into that world are immediate prey. Foster homes, orphanages, daycare--anyplace where young children come into the world and are raised in a group environment are endangered when the people in charge belong to the underworld of organized pedophilia. If you can allow your mind to go one step further to the young girls trapped in this world who become dissociative by ages 6-9, who become pregnant in their teens, those babies are born directly into the underworld without birth records or hospital records. Unknown numbers.

We've all heard survivor stories of babies or young children being killed in ceremonies which immediately creates disbelief. And while any ceremonial killings can be made to appear as real, one of two things happens. If a child was killed to instill horrific trauma and splitting in a victim, no one misses the child. If the child was spared because it was an illusion to the victim, the underworld still has their "extra" and unaccounted for victims for production of porn and sale for exploitation.

Most survivors I've met online are about my age. We are in our 50s now. Some are in their late 20s and 30s. It shows that evil world lives on for decades while we (the nation) have not bothered to look for the current generation. I'm wanting to call these children with DID "the walking dead". Once they are in the grips of the organization, they are there for decades unless there is intervention. I often cite Tyler's story which has a happy ending thanks to his very aware safe bio-father and now adoptive mother, along with an excellent judge. One commenter of my blogs describes going to court with her children only knowing the double language and, with difficulty, did win custody of her children.

As a therapist, several times I was compelled to report to Children's Services only to have the child returned to the abusive family. Not that the families were involved in organized pedophilia--but the greater world isn't trained to look for symptoms of abuse to the extent that can cause dissociation. Recall that severe emotional abuse is sufficient to cause DID. In fact, well-funded pro-pedophilia groups ensure dissociation is automatically dismissed as a hoax or lie.

We do have a holocaust. Incestuous families with home births have unidentified births as well as the previously mentioned institutional settings. No one knows the number. We do know the hundreds of thousands of young children reported missing by the FBI each year who are never found. And the FBI denies the existence of cults which is how memories first surface for this group of victims.

Safe adults need to be especially aware of a child trying to tell you something odd about another adult; i.e., appearing fearful while reporting his/her hair was washed, or was read a story, or was placed in time out. Several of my adult clients had dissociated memories from a regular babysitter! Do what it takes to ensure your child is in safe hands.

We have an oblivious holocaust. The children with DID who become adults with DID and don't remember for decades along with all the newborns and at all stages in between (prior to memory) are part of this oblivious holocaust. Oblivious to the children because of the amnesia and oblivious to society because it's not a comfortable area to be looking for children and government currently refuses to look for it. Government, law enforcement, the judicial system, child care services and other helping agencies are intentionally oblivious to the world of DID and "cult" abuse to protect what has been in place for generations. Not all in every agency are part of this world, but sufficient numbers exist for anyone getting near their "stuff" to be staved off quite effectively.

I have much support from peers and survivors for educating through my blog. As one person, the powerful people behind the child exploitation world are likely seeing me as "only one person". Yet a huge community stands behind me ready to come forward if it were ever made safe to do so. I've lived in fear subconsciously for four decades. I made the choice to live in spite of death threats for my conscious life. I don't care anymore. I want my life to have made a difference for the lost souls of the children right now enduring what will become a lifetime of horrendous abuse. No one deserves the life that we who survived had to endure. A single dissociated memory is hell to heal. It's impossible for those who have not endured trauma on trauma on trauma to possibly understand what undoing that does to one's spirit.

I feel fortunate to have a life at this point. I no longer fear parts of myself trying to kill me. "They" will have to get their hands dirty to come after me now that I've integrated and survived three phases to get to "100%". It will have been worth it if someone could take this cause and "run with it". I would dearly love to be a part of education and implementation of any program to make headway into this crime. And I have colleagues who are experts in DID as well as understanding of this organized world of child exploitation who, understandably, are not willing to place their careers on the line until safety is assured. Resources exist but are not wanted.

I remain hopeful that change will come with the Obama Administration. That's what keeps me going right now. No one believes because there is no "proof". We survivors are proof. Isn't that enough?

10 things you don't know about me

This topic for blog entries was suggested yesterday on Twitter. There isn't much I haven't shared on my combined blogs, but thought I'd give it a try.

1. Voted Most Likely to Succeed in high school. (Don't think I've shared that before.)
2. Have a very strong psychic connection to my best friend who lives in another state.
3. My book Paperclip Dolls is being considered for a screenplay by an award-winning screenwriter.
4. My favorite color is periwinkle blue.
5. I hate sports.
6. My mind is an incredible place to be. While most of my life it's use was expanded for traumatic purposes, as a healed entity, I have insight into wisdom and the universe that is difficult to explain. I feel blessed to have it. It connects me to Mother Earth and Goddess eras and James Bond. lol
7. The answer is in Paperclip Dolls, but when I asked my inner wisdom (then main protector) to show me what he looked like...since I had pictures of all my other alters at that time, he revealed himself to be Ian Fleming. In other words, he chose Ian Fleming's identity as his own for me to know him. Yet his manner and personality is identical to what is described in his biography which I had not read until after his disclosure. I wasn't even sure who Ian Fleming was. I looked him up on the internet after hearing the name in my head. By then I was used to random "clues" and just jotted the name down to look up later. I had an internal vision and some similar images for him. I used to wonder which actor would play him if my life were a movie but no one ever seemed to be him. When I saw Ian Fleming on my computer screen, I nearly fainted. It was exactly who I saw inside. Pretty neat. He has a different internal name.
8. My vacation to Italy in 2005 with my SO changed my life. Something spiritual happened there...like my soul had been hidden there throughout my traumatic life and I reaquired it during that trip.
9. I only need one sip of alcohol and can feel the impact on my brain. No, I don't drink now.
10. I hate that the world holds so much hate and believe it is about a balance of energy. Good people need to focus on placing their positive energy "out there" to counter the negative/evil energy of the world.
    

Top Ten Favorite Things

I was going to start a new blog today to share happy things when I realized this blog was designed to share healing thoughts too. I shall now integrate a purely happy post into my blog. The inspiration for doing this came from a tweet (on Twitter) referring to a lovely blog. One of the posts listed the author's top ten favorite things. Here are mine (in no particular order):

#1 Philosophy Pure Grace, Baby Grace, and Inner Grace fragrances for bath, shower, body.
#2 My "zen garden" in full bloom (Sunflowers, wisteria, lavendar, roses)
#3 Spa day!!!!
#4 Italy!
#5 decadent chocolate & espresso (a tie but also put Ghirardelli in my espresso)
#6 Laughing
#7 Snuggling
#8 Watching my tortoise Lucy & turtle Nemo w/their funny attitudes
#9 Naps
#10 Something so beautiful it makes me cry

Who am I now?

I've shared that I began to play with my name as early as high school. Hated my birthname and had no middle name. At first I changed the "y" at the end of my nickname to an "i". When I went into the Air Force at age 19, everyone called each other by last names. I was automatically called a shortened version of my last name and became the same nickname my father had since he was 19....only with an "i" at the end. I liked it because I no longer was tied to my birthname.

I legalized my Air Force nickname when I married in 1980. I was a feminized version of a male name from 1972 until about 1997 when memories surfaced. The second legal name change was to get rid of the association to my father but chose another feminized male name. I also gave myself a neutral middle name that was actually a letter spelled out. Jaye.

By the time I was ready to graduate with my M.A., my marriage was long over although we were not divorced. I wanted a professional name that was entirely my own--not a husband's or a father's. Mine. The original plan was to keep the same feminized male name plus Jaye plus my new last name which I was so thrilled about for reasons difficult to explain. Just prior to filing the papers, I had an epiphany (internal message) that my middle name was to be Grace. I thought about it for several days and came to love my soon to be middle name. It was the first fully feminine name of my own choosing. I never related to the external birth name. She was the hurt little girl. Her name from the inside was Janie. I had no connection whatsoever especially since I was called other names in my world of abuse.

I've been very happy with my completely new name since 2003. However, since Jane emerged in September to do the blogs and became a permanent part of my external being, I've became more connected to Grace than my first name. Now that the integration is complete, the internal message is all the alters who integrated into the gender confused name merged with my reunited core who was Grace. We became Grace. The Divine Feminine. Grace was also chosen as the healed entity with no trauma ties to the name, while Janie and Jane were part of that cruel world.

Does the identity confusion ever end? I now feel totally disconnected from the first name I've been known by in the real world since 2000. It's empty. I really don't want to do a legal name change. My online world knows me as Grace. My SO's family has a nickname for me that I love and is also feminine and a main name in my internal world. I'm not going to ask those who know me by my first name to stop calling me that. I know what a hardship that is. But I've already begun asking the banks to issue credit cards as Grace so I can sign that name.

I'm not sure it's a compulsion. I also wouldn't call it a disorder (identity disorder). To me it's identity confusion or identity shifting. I was a culmination of many alters with many names. I was led to the name that would be my final name (Grace) before I would ever understand it's true meaning. Changing names as a symptom of DID makes sense since, over the course of life, a new alter may take over in the outside world one or more times. But it's not disorderly. It's a very orderly system. It may seem odd. But as a matter of coping from the level of trauma that created so many identities, it makes perfect sense.

Grace. The meaning is beautiful. Healing into that name has been an incredible journey. I know there is more to come, but it is more about adjusting to sharing my life as an alter now combined with the mind of the child originally born into a cruel world. Maybe Grace will be my literally "saving" Grace to help me achieve my goals to tell the world about the evil that lurks under our noses. Since understanding what happened to me as a result of DID, my goal has been for my core to have her life back. It's lovely that she came out with similar goals to my life as a psychotherapist.

The days of gender confused parts of me is over. All are settled. All are safe. We have achieved our oneness with the universe.

Photo: I used to joke that this was me in the Air Force. I'm two years old at the airport on the way to Germany. My father put his military hat on me. It's a good representation of my internal identity matching my external garb.

DID weirdness

Having DID is weird. And the dissociation that remains even after major healing keeps life interesting, to say the least. I'm just understanding today about my eating cycles. For example, for months I was on a yogurt for lunch kick and snacking on healthy dried apricots daily. Suddenly I stopped and forgot they were even in the house. Throughout my life this has happened, usually noticed by an SO at the time.

This morning I was staring at the untouched apricots and realized I stopped eating them around September...when Jane came out rather prominently. Okay...Jane doesn't like apricots or yogurt. I started eating yogurt again since the integration but apparently there is no negotiation with the apricots. lol.

I rarely change what I eat and only eat certain foods. In grade school (one of those odd things to remember from a dissociated life), I used to eat bologna sandwiches every day. I've been repulsed by the thought of bologna since at least high school. Before I moved into my townhome a few years ago, I had delicious organic peanutbutter daily on toast. A huge treat. I brought two jars of it with me to the new home but it's not been touched. Change in home, change in dominant personality with different tastes? Thank goodness chocolate was never an issue.

After nearly two years of not moving, since I-day (integration) on Tuesday, I've been able to do healing energy work each day and stay off the extra calorie snacks. I have really good tasting snack bars with chocolate, high protein, and low calorie. As long as I remember to take one with me if I go out, I don't have the spontaneous chocolate bar craving. Or worse, the Starbucks double chocolate fudge espresso brownie and a truffle espresso. Guess it's just me having to be "on the same page" now. Although it is a melding of Jane's preferences and mine. Guess that will work out over time.

Even when integrated, initially it usually still feels like separateness until the smooth thoughts and actions become habit. I recall when a feisty little was in the process of integrating with adult me about 10 years ago. I'd have simultaneous double reactions which was beyond weird. Adult me would say, "Okay, fine." while my right hand would fly up and give the finger. Fortunately that was when I was a full-time healing survivor and not working or going to school. DID can be humorous and surprising. Kind of goes with comedians with unhappy childhoods having the best material, I guess.

In all the pain of healing, there were wonderful and even awesome moments. Am not feeling much internal anything since Tuesday...just lack of resistance to proceeding with my goals for healing my body. I do feel like my mind has put Humpty Dumpty back together again. I notice longer pauses for accessing information in my brain. That will pass though. And even though the external adult is one, the internal littles comprising the concept of inner child are happy and active and sometimes a little too spunky as I see sometimes on Twitter. Gotta watch that stuff.

While I've made this point before, and survivors have commented on this and other blogs, those with DID rarely appear out of the ordinary to the public. Their coping skills still work to get them through daily life. For most, there's only a brief time when memories begin that changes in mood or voice or personality may be noticed by others. We are fine (generally speaking) with the proper help. Society makes it so difficult for us to be ourselves. To say "We have DID" should not send the masses shrieking into the nearest shelter.

There is a generalized media-induced fear that anyone with DID has homicidal tendencies. This is so untrue and very unfair. If a person is telling you s/he has DID, it's known and being worked on. For women particularly, if there is a part prone to harm, it is towards the abusers only and understandable. I've stated before that women are more likely to harm themselves than ever harm another individual.

Men have a media-induced reputation of being dangerous and homicidal. If a man is in therapy and knows he has DID, he is not a danger. DID is often used as an attempted legal defense for someone who has committed a homicide but rarely was DID known or even validated prior to the crime. Just something to think about.

Being weird is not dangerous. In fact, it can be fun. Littles love to play games and color and watch Disney-like movies. I doubt you will be stabbed with a Crayola.

Another incarnation of me

I wasn't sure whether to post here or on Forbidden Topic. Since it's more personal than helpful to others, I'm choosing here. I've blogged about my ongoing healing event...knowing something happened but not having that emotional connection to the internal change. That happened today. With all the ranting I do on this blog, I thought I'd share some serene thoughts as well as thoughts of doubt and future. Healing from DID is a long journey. I've disclosed I had two major integrations prior to becoming a full time therapist. So I was highly functioning with few issues to work on in therapy. When I began to practice, I changed therapy to once a month. That was a huge change for me.

The trauma of the medical stuff last year created some havoc with littles being shaken loose so I was feeling a little bit multiple again in the fear department. They healed fairly quickly once I realized what was happening. That happened somewhere between Halloween and mid-November. But back in September, a healed adult part of me came out as the blogger and advocate. I knew her as a little, Janie, and knew there was an adult Jane. Jane must have lived a major part of my subconscious life...integral part of my being.

I knew Jane was the advocate but I didn't realize until recently that I felt like I was in the background and she had taken over my life. I also came to realize she embodied the healed original child (sometimes called the core). Was thinking it was really her life. She should do what she wants. But her focus has been so intense and serious. I'm missing the fun in my life. I haven't played with my robotic dinos in ages and have felt stifled in making a new video featuring my tortoise Lucy. I've just felt different and disconnected...further from my friends than usual.

At one point in the past year or two, it became known that several healed adults had joined with me and we presented as one to the outside world. I didn't specifically notice any difference. It was odd that a merger happened into the conscious world when I did not share consciousness with them. I've stated before that the texts state "true integration" is when the one healing feels connected and feels ownership of all that happened in her life. I did not have that experience. I know this is complicated but would like to carry it out to the end.

On my drive to the therapist today, I came to realize that Jane coming forward back in September caused a redistribution (for lack of a better term) of the others who had joined me. All previously dissociated selves are integrated into Jane or me. In my therapy work today, Jane came to understand we needed to share this life we have and I wanted her to be able to continue with the education and advocacy but I wanted to feel joy in my life. Internally, I was behind Jane. She stepped to the side, placed her arm around me and helped move me next to her. I can't explain the overwhelming emotion. This loving feeling just surged between us. It was like seeing someone you loved ages ago never thinking you'd ever see them again. I sort of stayed in that internal feeling of loving for awhile.

The next thing that happened took me by surprise and I wasn't sure I liked it. Suddenly Jane and I melded into each other becoming one entity. I knew it was a good thing but also sort of scary. With any integration, life has more clarity and answers but there is always a fear of "What if I get lost and don't know who I am?" That's never happened but it remains a fear. Am feeling okay right now. I definitely want joy back in my life. I want life back in my life. This medical setback has been awful but may also have created a set of circumstances where I may have been unable to completely integrate without it. DID is weird.

I can definitely say my journey of integration is not what the experts would have you believe. The one big question is whether I will feel connected to the abuse that happened to my body...that ownership of my life. Time will tell. In the meantime, my core, my spirit, my being has strengthened. This I know.

Delusions vs. early childhood trauma memory

Part of my internship for my counseling degree was with the inpatient psychiatric ward of a hospital. The hospital did not acknowledge DID and, as a student, I was advised not to make any waves. While it was clear many were delusional or schizophrenic, there were times I would have at least screened for dissociation. Instead, the hospital psychiatrists simply prescribed medication for delusions or "hearing voices" that would be against treatment guidelines for dissociation. No one bothered to even distinguish if "hearing voices" was from inside or outside. Outside voices usually goes with schizophrenia, but not always.

One of the reasons so few were diagnosed with DID in the past is that those with DID were misdiagnosed as schizophrenic. Colin Ross, M.D. wrote a book on this topic but is also supported in much validated research. I had one client who came to me while still heavily medicated from being diagnosed as schizophrenic for several years. He did not believe he was getting better. His psychiatrist was very nice to work with me and wean him off the zombifying medications. While the client was not DID, he had dissociated memories of abuse. His personality blossomed as the medications wore off. He maintained his antidepressant and antianxiety and healed to have a much more functioning life. In early interviews with him, he disclosed he was diagnosed as schizophrenic because he heard a voice and, in fact, had a name that went with the voice. Maybe not clear to all, but clearly to me the sign of a self state.

Tyler, the young boy whose healing is described in the first post of Believe the Children recalled adults dressed up as gorillas. Actually, he told me they were gorillas who could talk to him and who forced him to engage in sexual activities. Perps in gorilla suits. A 5-year-old reporting to a therapist who is not open to understanding DID that gorillas touched him in bad places and was made to do sexual things likely would have been labeled delusional or having fantasies. I shudder to think where that little boy would be now if he had seen someone who did not hear what a 5-year-old was trying to say or use techniques to help the child explain what a "gorilla" meant.

Tyler did not dissociate. Adults healing now from DID may have a similar trauma memory of a group of clowns or devils or gorillas forcing themselves upon the child. Remember the intentional unbelievability factor of child porn and exploitation groups. I have to wonder what is going on with therapists who are treating DID but then believe they are working with someone delusional if a memory comes up outside the therapist's realm of believability. What is happening to survivors of sophisticated and/or organized pedophilia in the hands of a therapist who cannot accept that the "delusions" are intentional and very treatable in someone with DID?

In my attempt to help my client with community law enforcement, I was repeatedly asked if she wasn't really delusional? How did I KNOW she wasn't making her current abuse up for attention? This is the life of every survivor. It's stepping through landmines to get help at any level. Change needs to happen.

Dear skeptical therapists: It doesn't matter!

I'm a psychotherapist who intimately knows the world of DID and has gained great insight into the world of abuse from whence I came. I was fortunate to find a qualified therapist once I overcame my fear of going to a therapist. However, there has been a battle raging in the psychotherapy and world of psychiatry for years about "ritual abuse" and "mind control" being real. It must be delusional because there is no proof. How long did the US go before believing the holocaust existed? How many more could have been saved if someone had gone to see about the reports instead of saying "this could never happen"?

It's not about who did what or how it was done, it's about the survivor's distress. As therapists, our job is "first do no harm" and provide the best care possible. It doesn't matter if you believe a person was made to worship Satan or whether babies were killed and Lord knows what else happened. Remember Capricorn One? The American people were led to believe that a space capsule had landed on Mars when it was all made up on a stage using props. It is known that children will believe what they are told is true. Abuse statistics (without any adjectives to the abuse) are known to be high. Abuse is scary to a child. Often it is terrifying. During a state of heightened fear, the believability factor becomes greater. Fact.

I have processed memories where I was convinced for several years that at least one baby was killed in front of me and an 11-year-old boy. Later processing proved that both were hoaxes because my younger sister and my then 11-year-old cousin are alive. Were an actual child and young boy murdered to fool me? I'll never know. I do know props that look real were used and all technology available to include virtual reality were employed. More invasive things such as drugs were used to distort realities as well. All create a memory steeped in trauma. The survivor needs to heal from the trauma. Where it came from is irrelevant.

If a survivor says "I was gang raped by six gorillas," it is not delusional unless the survivor shows delusional tendencies in other areas of their life too. In trauma, what a child remembers is locked in. Healing from processing the gorilla memory is proof of no delusion. But if a therapist declares the survivor delusional for having such a memory, IMO, the "first do no harm" rule is violated. We don't have to have had experienced something firsthand to help someone heal from it. I have worked with grief but have not experienced loss of someone I loved (consciously).

Is it a phenomenon that survivors worldwide disclose similar memories of unbelievable abuse? Or is it because it is THAT pervasive? As therapists, we have to step back and treat our clients with respect regardless of what comes up as a trauma memory. If we are unable to do so, it's time to refer to a therapist with a more open view of how trauma might be instilled in a young child so as to appear unbelievable when it surfaces.

As survivors, you have the right to withdraw from treatment by someone who invalidates your memories and find someone who will treat you respectfully and with the intent to help to include consultation with others in the field with more experience.

We, as a society, must stop looking at the circumstances of the abuse, and must begin to see survivors in need of help to heal. We are not delusional. The sick f*cks who did this to us are not a delusion either.

Now it makes sense

More answer leaked through today. Evil uncle was called favorite uncle's name in world of abuse. No one was called by real name if they were known in my life. My poor cousin who came up huge in my memories as growing up with me as "Mikey"...and "killed" at age 11. Evil uncle died with last 10 years. I'm so angry about good uncle. Guess I need to be careful of yet another layer of this crap surfacing. So many years to get to the truth. But my gut now says it was never the good uncle. His name was used to instill fear of the safe one.

The irony is that the perps who connected abuse to nice guy relatives while evil relatives did the harm then created an organization claiming therapists implant memories and DID doesn't exist. Why can't the world see through this sh*t?

This is how healing of a memory is validated. The distress is addressed and resolved. The part(s) experiencing the distress integrate or move back inside to be part of the whole. The healing headache. And then brain begins to reconnect to fill in some of the blanks. I wonder if it's too late to be a part of my good uncle's life? His daughter was a lovely person and good friend even though we lived on different sides of the nation. Maybe I do have family that loves me. Is that too much of a fantasy?

Unraveling the lies

Incestuous families have a dynamic of creating divides between siblings and other relatives. Children of incest tend to have more issues with relationships than most. I have been able to piece together how a divide was created between my younger sister and me. I was closer to my older sister but not in the way I view close sister relationships in the media. My closest friends are more like sisters in my current life than my birth family. It's very sad.

The one family abuse dynamic I never understood is why my favorite uncle came up so prominently in abuse memories. Yet I never felt fear around him during childhood or the last I saw him in the 1990's. All other abuse was father focused...expanded to his world. Having my one maternal uncle in the mix has always been difficult for me to believe. I started to speak of this in the Forbidden Topic blog. It is possible, because my uncle was connected to an aspect of the world that crossed over into the sophisticated realm of organized pedophilia, they did not want me to be close to him.

My fear reaction has been to his name--not to him. Because of the situation with my 5-year-old client Tyler (Believe the Children) where the perps referred to other abused children by the names of his cousins, it is possible that tactic was used with me. Someone was an abuser who was called by my uncle's name throughout my childhood and beyond?

In following my uncle's career, I came across a biographical video. I'm in my 50s and he is in his 70s. He seems so happy and at peace in his life and with his wife whom I met and adored. I stared at the video and tried to look through him to see the evil. But there was none. If this was one of the manipulations by the organized pedophiles, I have no words to express the feeling of having what may have been my one safe family relationship stolen from me.

I'm able to step back now from the messages about abuse by my uncle and my genuine feelings toward him. I have such a visceral response to seeing photos of abusers or wondering if I might "run into" someone known to have been in my past. I have none of that with my uncle. Such is the stuff of memories. It takes so long to figure out all the lies, by the time enough of the truth is known, it may be too late to ever have someone who has truly been safe and family to be part of my current life.

Knowing how my mind was molded with certain beliefs and how Tyler's mind had already begun to be molded without the dissociative factor, it's frightening how easily a young child can be led to believe whatever a powerful adult says. Next time an older child or teenager is found in the custody of an abductor, please remember that no guns or weapons are needed to hold that child captive--to prevent the child from ever telling. Nothing causes me to feel sick faster than society quickly pointing to how many opportunities a child in danger did not take to tell someone of the situation. It doesn't work that way.

Let the truth be known

For the first few years of my recovery, I journaled my trauma as it oozed from my subconscious as well as my healing process. What surfaced was a world I never knew existed. I've spoken of healing through collages. I have several trunks full of collages and research and drawings and doodles and scribblings. I gave a short presentation at the 1998 SMART conference on "scrapbook therapy" and how it could benefit healing as well as internal communication. I gave a longer presentation at the 1999 SMART conference. It was also at that time I had completed my book Paperclip Dolls documenting my healing to that point. My pen name and survivor name was Annie McKenna.

It's safe to say I really didn't know who I was at the time memories came up that included such government programs as Operation Paperclip (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4443934.stm) and MK-Ultra (http://www.arts.rpi.edu/~pellr/lansberry/mkultra.pdf). I found numerous survivors online with the same type of memories. I was deathly afraid of seeking a therapist who would be safe because of the content of my surfacing story. Becoming a psychotherapist didn't become a thought in my mind until 2000. I was able to enter a grad school counseling program in summer 2001. I made the transition from the world of what has been dubbed conspiracy theory to functionally healed survivor entering a new life chapter in a new career.

Note: The URLs provided above do not work if used in a hyperlink. Please cut and paste into your browser to get to the document.

In hindsight, I realize how focused I was on the unbelievability of my own memories and researching for hours a day only to find continued validation rather than information negating the memories that came from my murky dissociated past. Now that I'm beyond integration with much slowed new memory content and many resolved triggers, I realize now it doesn't matter what happened to me--only that I healed. But dealing with the memory content is, I believe, a stage of healing requiring focus to understand the breadth and intensity of the abuse.

I have been living in fear of having been Annie McKenna and now living my life as Grace the psychotherapist-blogger-writer-advocate. Last night I completed my application to the Obama Transition Project. I wanted to no longer have to hide that I was Annie McKenna. The new presidency is about openness. I shouldn't have had to feel shame about my history, but having had DID is still not completely accepted in my own profession, although it's the focus of treatment for my professional colleagues. Therapists who are also survivors mostly stay in the shadows so we can do the work we want to help others through that difficult healing journey.

For the first time ever, a professional organization of therapists who work with clients with DID, has opened discussion of the world of ritual and government abuse, both with the common denominator of organized pedophilia. For a therapist to speak of ritual abuse or government mind control has been taboo. Major strides have been made in the past few years. A presentation by professional colleagues was given to the United Nations to highlight the torturous methods used by groups of pedophiles to create dissociation. This is known to be a worldwide issue.

After 11 years of healing and living in both worlds, I still can't say what really happened to me other than a sh*tload of trauma. I know certain things were very real while other details are fuzzy. I was led to so much information about government abuse of its own citizens that I could not believe in anything political. I am aware of officials in my local government and/or agencies that have at least one person protecting the secrets of organized pedophilia. It is my hope that, under the new presidency, there might be a commission or task force to address these layers of government with the secrets as well as redirect the focus for survivors of abuse to safely report known "cult" activity and seek help. It would also require that health insurance companies be mandated to cover the more intense therapy needed for a survivor to heal from DID, and a new way for all of law enforcement and other helping agencies to view dissociation and work with victims of sophisticated abuse.

I want to be part of that change. The reason you don't see other therapists jumping on the bandwagon with this issue is that careers could be at stake. I'm in a place right now where my career is on hold and I can advocate from my home. I want it to be okay to be me to include my first few years of healing.

My book is no longer available although I'm going to try to make it available through Kindle. The SMART website still sells cassette tapes of each presentation from each SMART conference if anyone is interested. I don't benefit from sales. I've spoken in the Forbidden Topic blog about most techniques for which I gave presentations. What I have avoided in the blog are details about government and other key words that tend to cause the greater public to immediately dismiss the survivor. I am a survivor of that crap. I lived to heal. I lived to help others heal. And now I would like to be part of the change--to be proud of my country and my government once again.

Photo: My "nursery school" graduation photo. My mother has no recollection of my having been at nursery school, nor does my older sister. She was age 6 when I was 3. Look at the size of the diploma. Where are the other children? Why is "no one home" in my expression? Why is it a dirty area? Where was I when my mother thought I was in nursery school? If you look at the photo in enlarged detail, you can see the bruises under my lip and the blood on my lips. My mother always showed me that picture describing it as nursery school when she used to show it to me. Part of my manufactured childhood.

"My Own Worst Enemy"

Just for the record, I wanted to point out the fallacies used as a basis for Edward/Henry's "split personality" in the new television series My Own Worst Enemy. The plot is something like this:

Edward, as an adult, gives his consent to undergo a technological creation of a personality split or alter ego. Edward is the spy who tortures, kills, does whatever to complete his assignment for the agency for which he works. Henry is the loving timid family man who wouldn't hurt a fly. This "program" intended for Edward always to be amnestic for Henry's activities and vice versa. But Edward and Henry are leaking over into each other's mind space. The ongoing message is that "he doesn't work anymore" and "must be terminated".

There are similarities to someone with multiple personalities and some very misleading plot lines. First of all, it's only a diagnosis of "multiple" for two or more distinct personalities who take over control of the body. "Split personality" is not a synonym for DID or multiple personalities. I don't know where that came from and didn't feel like looking it up since it is irrelevant. It is rare that someone with DID only has two personalities. That is more likely the case for someone who is dissociative, but not to the extreme of a diagnosis of DID.

Before Edward knew his alter ego Henry, neither had conscious knowledge of the other. In DID terms, they were both dissociated from one another. By having shared consciousness, they are no longer completely dissociated. They are sometimes co-conscious. At this point in the show, they each know when they are "switching" to the other. They leave each other messages on the cell phone or some handheld device. Alters can do this as well--write messages, draw pictures, run errands, help out and/or disrupt the life of another dissociated state. In such cases, the alter knows when s/he is taking over but, until the survivor begins to heal, s/he is amnestic for all activities conducted by an alter.

Edward agreed as an adult to have a dissociated self state created. I have no idea if such technology exists today. Since you can see in the show that the objective is something along the lines of a Manchurian Candidate, let us all pray it is not. Microchips are being implanted in people under the guise of safety but what else can the implants do? The only known way to have DID is to be traumatized physically, emotionally, sexually, or medically over a period of time as a young child. DID does not happen in adults. DID is usually diagnosed in adults but it is there because something horrible happened when the person was a child.

In one episode, Henry finds evidence of his childhood which he believes proves he was not created because Edward's agreement to an experiment. The woman who heads the tech lab where minds are routinely tampered with, shows Henry she is aware of his past because she "implanted" a lifetime of memories in him. This is the most distressing aspect of the show. It is doing great harm to the world of survivors and furthers the propaganda of "false memories". The claim that therapists can implant memories in a survivor is beyond far-fetched. An unscrupulous therapist might try to implant a hypnotic suggestion to take advantage of a client but no one has the ability to implant a lifetime of anything in another person.

Actually Henry believes he had a childhood because he found photos of what he believed was himself as a child. Often survivors recall their childhood history as shown repeatedly through pictures or slides the perp parent(s) showed over and over again throughout their lives. It becomes the conscious history. What is claimed to have been used against us to create such horrid memories of abuse was used to try to create a childhood timeline to allow us to recall childhood "highlights". Most people don't delve much further than those surface nontraumatic memories.

The mind naturally tries to fill in the blanks. Growing up with very little conscious memory of childhood seemed normal because my mind connected the dots that were there. The mind is incredible. The fact that we can heal from such horrific abuse is a miracle. I'm not sure that was part of the original plan. And Edward's mind is doing something that was never supposed to happen. For Edward, it means death. What kind of message do you think that delivers to survivors who are just beginning to heal and their fear is at such a heightened state from the recalled death threats "for telling"? I don't think the show was written by the good guys. Or the bad guys used their money and bought a big chunk of propaganda.

Enjoy the show. Please remember what is true and what is false. Just because it's on television doesn't make it so.

Words behind the video

Shelter (lyrics behind the video The Missing Child Abuse Statistics)

They're crowded into the smallest spaces
While outside, all of nature cries
It's known to be cruel and unfair
But there is no place to hide
Oh, I've seen a part of people that I never really wanted to share
Oh, I've seen a part of people that I never knew was there

Shelter, give them shelter from the coming storm
Shelter, give them shelter from the coming storm

I can't sleep - haunted by their faces
The sadness in their eyes
It hurts so much to see them helpless
It makes me want to cry
But still there is so much left unanswered
For so many innocent lives
They closed the door and are letting nobody in
And only the strong will survive

(Chorus)

I've seen the anger and I've seen all the dreams
And I've watched their existence torn apart at the seams
And though I may seem helpless
I will do all that I can do
I've seen a part of people that I never really wanted to share
Oh, I've seen a part of people that I never knew was there

Shelter, give them shelter from the coming storm
Give them shelter, give them shelter from the coming storm

Are we a media-controlled society? You decide.

I just watched the movie Zeitgeist. All Americans should see this movie. Use your critical thinking skills. Hear what it says. Open your minds. Some intensity with scenes of war but it is enlightening in ways we need to be--as a nation who believes that we, the people, actually matter. It will shed light on why McCain would not end the war and why Bush got us into Iraq. How are we manipulated by the Federal Reserve Bank that is not in any way Federal but has the power to completely control the banks and the money market leading to panic and foreclosures and bankruptcy. Gee, isn't that what is happening now?

The research presented on the basis of religion is fascinating. Suffice it to say, as Bush exits as president, he leaves the country primed for the next step for us to be even more controlled by the wealthiest among us. Obama's campaign goes directly against every point made by this movie for Americans to open their eyes before it is too late. I invite you to watch the movie and ask yourself, "What if this were true?" Then look at your own personal history and view of the world and see what fits and what doesn't. This film is asking you to think. My blog is asking you to think. If you think the government covering up pedophilia is farfetched, your eyes are not open.

Regardless of who our next president will be, watch this movie. Please. We need to guide our government. We need to be watching the greater strategy and not allow it to happen. We cannot allow McCain to continue with the Bush legacy. What I found most shocking was an objective for the children of the U.S. NOT to be educated so the next generations would not question government and personal liberties. See where the U.S. is with regard to level of education in the world. One of Obama's primary goals is to educate our children. We do need dramatic change. Obama asks us to take part in our own governing. That's how we take back the power the banks have taken over us.

The movie ends with a quote. “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." This quote has been attributed to John F. Kennedy, Jimi Hendrix, and others.

Vote tomorrow. It matters.

Pedophile Network into Government

I'm so sick of this stuff. The county in which I had tried to enlist help for my client who is still being horrifically harmed by a group of male perps, just had it's former County Commissioner arrested for illegal sexual activities. He videotaped himself 100 to 500 times having sexual encounters with young men, most of whom he hired as escorts. It's so obvious on our local level. No wonder law enforcement won't touch it or puts the blame on victims. They don't want any part of shaking up the system that supports the perverse activities of those who could impact the employment of a "whistleblower".

I was personally attacked by the county Attorney General's office and a local rape crisis unit in attempting to advocate for my client under constant attack by "child alter predators" for lack of a better term. We need a new vocabulary to include these acts of rape and education with a safe way of reporting for victims as well as enforcers of the law.

I'm guessing it happens nationally but there are a few cemeteries in my greater area that are attacked on a regular basis by "vandals". Except that it takes heavy duty construction equipment to knock over the tombstones which would be impossible by a few teenage thugs. A recent local news report told of a cemetery where vandalism happened on the same night for several weeks in a row. Well why the heck wasn't there a surveillance camera on that third week? Is it just me? Why wouldn't it be THAT simple? Unless it really wasn't the intent to find the "vandals". And why doesn't law enforcement get real and look at the dates on the calendar set up by the perps for their meetings to see that every year the cemeteries are attacked on the same days or within the same time period?

I was able to do that online to see the pattern. I'm not law enforcement. Do you know how many people come to this website by searching for pedophile sites? It sickens me. Who do I report that to? Does anyone care? Yoohoo. Looking for pedophiles? Follow these IP addresses.

I hope Obama is elected and has the power to truly shake out the government of all the secret connections to pedophilia and put an end to whatever was started during the Cold War. Some of the most active in the publicly known shame of MK-Ultra are still alive.

Look at this quote taken from this description of MK-Ultra:

The Agency [CIA] poured millions of dollars into studies probing dozens of methods of influencing and controlling the mind. One 1955 MK-ULTRA document gives an indication of the size and range of the effort; this document refers to the study of an assortment of mind-altering substances described as follows:

1. Substances which will promote illogical thinking and impulsiveness to the point where the recipient would be discredited in public.

Gee, doesn't this sound like what happens to adult survivors with DID? We are discredited and it was intentional. I believe there is no greater example of government and world psychiatric involvement with MK-Ultra than this. Documents exist that prove Canadian psychiatrist Ewen Cameron was the recipient of funds from MK-Ultra to do mind control experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute of McGill University in Canada. His victims were unwitting participants and suffered lifelong aftereffects. During his time of involvement with the government program in the 50s and 60s, Cameron was the head of the World Psychiatric Association as well as president of both the Canadian and American Psychiatric Associations. The Canadian government knew of the involvement and provided additional funding!

This was the known beginning of government agencies involved in ordinary citizens becoming unwitting victims of human experimentation. Rather than provide citations, I encourage interested readers to google a few key words and learn for yourself. Read the actual documents as opposed to someone interpreting "on your behalf". You be the judge. It has never been acknowledged that children were used as part of MK-Ultra yet, simultaenously, children were being used by the Department of Energy as cited in another post on this blog. Why wouldn't they use children? Why wouldn't they tap into the evil nature of pedophiles among their own ranks? Why do so many with DID who grew up in the 50s and 60s have similar memories of government and hospitals and institutions connected to universities? It's all in the MK-Ultra hearings. The survivors are the proof.

The former County Commissioner arrested in my area this week is proof. The woman I used to treat will soon no longer be able to tell her story. Everything connects to everything. I pray for a new government...the sooner the better. At some point good people will tune in and listen and find those missing 600,000 children reported by the FBI in 2007 as adult victims with a diagnosis of DID and needing mental health care to help them heal from so many years as the invisible abused. Let's not wait another 30 to 50 years to learn the truth about these children.

Question your reality. Check the facts. Don't let the media think for you.

"Bring on the Evidence of My Life"

What A Day, a song by Greg Laswell, sung for a Grey's Anatomy episode, are the lyrics to my day. The rest of my yuck memory surfaced during my therapy session. I'm grateful that my mind can be out of that level of distress by surgery next week. The answer is always something humane people cannot possibly imagine. I can't imagine having survived what I remember from many memories. Today was particularly gruesome. Sometimes I wish I hadn't survived to remember them.

There was a time having a memory like this would have disabled me for weeks. I'm now at a point where I recognize when a memory is coming, do what I can on my own, recognize what needs to happen when I can hear reassuring words from my therapist. I suspected my older sister was also a victim but it never came up in my system as a direct message. I had alter names that were similar to hers. In my dreams she is always helping me. She was a nice big sister. I have conscious memory of her teaching me to tie my shoes. Part of the message was both my sisters were victims of my father. My younger sister was in my memories as a baby/toddler. I grew up terrified of her without any conscious reason.

I had also read that sometimes one child of a perp will not be hurt. I figured my older sister had been spared. But her husband came up as a perp. Strange family history with him. My father and his previous generations came up. He had the perfect parental combination to be a sadist. Am sure he tortured and killed animals as a child.

For the first 2-3 years of my healing, I thought all of my abusers were connected to my father and far from home. A boy who was with me through my abuse from birth to age 11 appeared to have been killed in a horrific manner in my presence. My family moved overseas the summer I was 11. I had a very twisted history of "Mikey". Later in healing I learned "Mikey" had been my cousin who was still alive and well. We were born a month apart. That was a stunning answer. Shook up my life all over again. Mikey was the son of my father's sister. My favorite aunt. Her husband was evil personified. If I had to choose between that uncle (now deceased) and my father as a child, I would have chosen my father even though I was always afraid of him. Another trick, lie, to cause me great distress in my dissociated life. My cousin has not had a good life. Very troubled since high school. I saw him only a few times at family gatherings prior to the late 90s from the time we returned from that overseas assignment.

Another relative who was the biggest shock, was an uncle...on my mother's side. How was that possible unless all family and all relations were either perps and/or dissociative. The "ideal" dysfunctional multi-generational family? I can't say much about my uncle other than that his name and his particular world surfaced. Yet I have no distress surrounding him except for generalized fear of family. I recall always wanting to be close to him consciously. No fear. Even at the last family gathering. I would have thought he was the most gentle being on the planet. That is how the rest of the world views him...that and being brilliant. I still reel from this knowledge. I hope my memory is wrong. But I trust it sufficiently to maintain my distance.

Using Tyler as an example, the child featured on Believe the Children, names of his young cousins were used by abusers for other children being hurt with him which makes the report unbelievable. My memories have had proof of their reality...at least locations. Precise details. Understanding the dynamics of families with organized pedophiles, it makes sense that abuse would have come from both sides. It's still mind boggling. I still hold out hope my uncle is safe. Not all has been processed.

What a day to be alive
What a day to realize I'm not dead

I'm glad to feel the relief of having the answer that needed to come forward. It's never easy to know any detail of horror. My being was literally shattered with this memory. It created the little boy alters who could answer honestly to "Are you a girl?" It wasn't okay for me to be a girl coming into this world. The only way to instill such a belief in a 4- or 5-year-old girl was to create huge trauma and cause a breakdown that would result in a division where a female child could be consciously a girl and subconsciously believe she was a male. It's a lot to process. Evil genius if you think like a perp, I guess. It's sad to have to know how to think like a perp to truly understand or make any sense of the "why".

Ever hear the terms on television shows...like Alias? People are always referred to as assets. Depersonalize. What a day to be human.

Preparing for Oct 31st

Any survivor of organized pedophilia or a pedophile who made holidays a day of abuse dreads Halloween, beginning with the store decorations a month or more earlier. Then come the lawn decorations. We use our coping skills. More are needed during early healing. I'm pretty much healed from dissociation but still have PTSD with a few very strong responses remaining.

Yesterday, I was the passenger (thank goodness) in a car following a car that had a partial arm and hand hanging out of the trunk. I didn't see it initially. When I did, I went into a screaming sort of panic attack. I was observant of the reaction and calmed myself down but hated having to follow that car for another five minutes. I was angry that people thought that was funny.

Early in healing, I couldn't deal with the lawn decorations and especially the night of trick or treating. Little kids in costumes. But it was terrifying. Trigger overload. I've lost many of those responses. Either I'm just subconsciously blanking out the decorated homes or not as many people are doing lawn skeletons or graveyards or dead people hanging off of roofs this year. I've been okay but still dread it.

I know I spoke of this before but it's very much on my mind right now and on the minds of survivors and victims everywhere. An innocent pumpkin even uncarved, sends a bit of a chill down my spine. Still. Something horrid happened on Halloween night that went into November 1st when I was very young. I think I had just turned two. It has stayed with me and my mind never let go of whatever happened. I think I know, but I will never have proof. Except that I have PTSD to Halloween after ten years of healing and even helping others to cope with their own Halloween PTSD.

I will cope. I have the skills. I shouldn't have to cope though. No child should ever have to cope with the level of trauma those with DID endure and endured.

Page 2 of the story

Herschel Walker has DID. I saw his video today on YouTube and a longer version at FORA.tv. One of the better articles was written by a CNN website. Interesting listening to him. Finally someone normal people can relate to. He won the Heisman Trophy in 1982. See what an amazing life he led? No one knew. His wife started to see the switching once he began to fall apart before the healing.

I read several articles that were released in April 2008. Many spread the misinformation. Some were well reported. What I heard of Herschel's video, he is sincere in describing how he embraces his personalities. One article was so offensive, I left my point of view, FWIW. Walker wrote his story Breaking Free: My Life with DID which was also released in April 2008. The odd part of the story is Herschel believes (as does his therapist) that alters were created in response to bullying in grade school. Possibly he hasn't gotten to the original abuse memories since he would have had DID from abuse prior to age 9 (at the latest).

His therapist obviously was not trained to treat DID. Some of the articles sensationalized issues, especially a suicidal part. I'm sure in men that would manifest in more active and violent ways than a woman would consider. I can't speak to the veracity of stories of him threatening his wife with a knife in an alter state. I feel badly that his story cannot be written accurately because people write the propaganda instead of the well researched work by the experts. DID needs a spokesperson. I'm sure any celebrity who has struggled with identifying and healing from DID has gone to great lengths to hide it. Look at what has been done to Britney Spears. If she has DID, she is suffering enough without her mental health issues being plastered across headlines.

A singing group called Thirteen Senses has extraordinary songs that match the realm of organized pedophile abuse. Makes me wonder if the composer is a survivor. Sarah McLachlan sings beautifully and chillingly of that world of abuse. Maybe one day we survivors will have our spokesperson so we will be heard.

I vs. We vs. You

Something extraordinary happens to people who realize they have DID. Their language changes to describe themselves as "we". It's sort of a natural evolution. And it is difficult to hide in public. Survivors try to hide it because it is unacceptable to society (from the greater world to the workplace to the family of origin). Lives of those who are victims of horrific abuse have to hide what is happening to them at a most vulnerable time in their lives when they want to be reaching out to others.

I learned the hard way. My best friend at work, where I was employed at the time of coming undone, was someone I trusted. Of course I was sharing about my nightmares and research and OMG I have multiple personalities! Well, it scared the sh*t out of him. I told my boss because I thought she should know because I was so emotionally distressed and still trying to work. She was angry when I needed short-term disability to try to regroup from the emotional bomb because I left her short-handed. So much for support. I didn't learn from that experience. When I was further along with memories, I had left my full time employment and tried a less demanding job. In trying to help a fellow employee whose sister was remembering father abuse, I offered information that frightened her.

This is what the media has done to us abuse survivors. I learned just prior to my leaving my full time position that my former best friend at work had believed some part of me would jump out and punch him. He was over 6' tall and I'm under 5'. Go figure. It's ridiculous how we have to fight propaganda. If you're a friend, you can ask! What can I do to help you? Should I be afraid of you? What should I do if you are someone else here at the office?

I remember struggling to hide the "we" in my language. Of course that only served to fuel the unnecessary fear if I let it slip. If you know someone who has DID, allowing them to just be comfortable is a wonderful gift. Friends and significant others open to knowing all of the person they love or care about can give healing a much-needed boost. You may get to know other selves. If an identity feels safe to speak to you, the more likely that part will begin sharing consciousness with the person you know as your friend. It's all good.

When I began to speak to classmates at grad school, I was extra careful about my language. By the end of the degree program, I had at least one major integration. My language shifted just as naturally back into "I". I didn't have to think about it. I still could have been a therapist with DID and all the coping skills, but integration made it easier and I'm grateful for the change before I began to see clients.

Actually, it's reassuring to say "we" as a multiple. It's validation to all inside who are unhealed or healed but separate (cooperation vs. integration). All share the body. "We" is a term meaning more than one. It's the correct term.

Falling awake from amnesia

**Viewing the video may be triggering to unhealed survivors**




I've been trapped in my creative flow lately. I think I just completed the last video for awhile. It taps into all my energy although I'm pleased with the result in educational terms. The new video was created to help the greater world understand what it's like for trauma memories to begin to seep through consciousness in sleep. Images of what might be typically innocent objects come up as trauma with no meaning initially. Puzzle pieces that will eventually make sense. The logical brain tries to put the pieces together, but the pieces initially viewed may not even go with the same puzzles(s). Fitful sleep is a problem for all with DID. Some medications help but don't stop the brain's natural process of releasing the trauma.

It was challenging to create a dreamscape. Often dreams continue in a similar manner to the leaking memories. A continuing dream is a sign that it likely goes with a memory. Often survivors become fearful of going to sleep. I personally chose to sleep on the sofa for about a year since I seemed not to have memories when I didn't go to sleep in bed. Eventually nightmares began on the sofa as well. Since major healing, I rarely have the trauma nightmares. I still often awake having had a dream with elements of my unknown past feeling scared or trapped. It's "softened". I wonder if it ever fully processes. I do have periods of time with no dreams. I don't seem to dream at all unless some element of my dissociated past is included.

Before memories, I had wonderful dreams and strange typically odd dreams from bits and pieces of my conscious world. I also had my share of nightmares which I always viewed as just nightmares and something normal.

Lately, I'm a bit overwhelmed realizing how society and government as we know it now is so inculcated with this pedophilia web. It's a shame it keeps getting passed on because the abusers from my past are in their 70s and 80s now...mostly. I keep waiting to see their obituaries. Do you realize that government money supports the abuse of our children? Some subheading of a subheading in the budget.

So as not to sound too "out there", I'd like to suggest you check out the Dept. of Energy's website disclosing it's human radiation experiments which included children during the Cold War. And let us not forget the Tuskeegee experiments, the radiation in the oatmeal of orphans, nonconsensual testing of soldiers, injecting terminally ill cancer patients with Plutonium without their knowledge at Massachusetts General Hospital in the 40s and 50s, and more.

Somehow the records of these projects are never released or found until 30 to 40 years after the secret experiments. If you search for government human experimentation, there is a list showing known experiments as recently as 2000. Where in the government are today's human experimentation projects hidden and funded? Think Agent Orange, the measles vaccine where Kaiser Permanente has been implicated in a class action suit, and numerous references to biological experimentation on soldiers who gave no consent and had no knowledge until after the fact. It makes me wonder about bird flu and something else that turned up in the US in the past few years that hadn't been here before.

Possibly having biology labs, and military and government elements in memories (proven or not) causes one to question the government's allegiance to its own citizens. I can't tell you how tragic it was for me to remember something scientific in a memory/dream only to learn it was true. This is why speaking the truth is forbidden. It's too big to stop. But the secrecy aspect of anything can only go on as long is goes unquestioned by the humanity of our world. By the way, reading or hearing anything scientific or mathematical is a trigger to me. How does that happen if trauma didn't get connected to it? Just something to consider.

It doesn't matter if what I remember or other survivors with similar memories are recalling is truth. Questioning is good. Demanding disclosure is good. Senator Kennedy was part of declassifying many documents related to experiments on unwitting college students, military and government employees and citizens in the early 1970s. However, the person in charge of the program known as MK-Ultra destroyed as many documents as he could prior to the hearings (see Wikopedia's page on this topic). A group of people who had been targeted for experimentation under this program in Canada were finally successful in receiving a settlement from the CIA.

In reviewing the link to the MK-Ultra hearings, I just noticed that Senator Biden was on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigating MK-Ultra. Why weren't the citizens of the nation outraged when that was going on? There was barely a ripple.

Waking up from amnesia is definitely a double edged sword. I wish America would wake up and smell the deception and subhuman elements of our government and society...before I die. That is my wish. The background song to the new video is Gary Jules's "Mad World". Yeah, it is.

Validation is a b*tch

During the first three months of 2007, several members of the psychological community and/or survivors opened an extensive online questionnaire for survivors of extreme abuse. Over 1,400 survivors from 31 countries participated. Word of the survey was spread through the internet and therapists with clients who were survivors. It was a "spread the word" campaign. Survivors who knew survivors who knew support groups of survivors.

The term "extreme abuse" encompasses all that I have been addressing plus elements I won't specifically address here, but am providing the link if you wish more details. It also is one explanation of why there was a "surge" of adults with a diagnosis of DID in the 80s and 90s.

My motivation for finding the results was to support my presentation here that the common denominator for extreme abuse is organized pedophilia. The following was copied from the Extreme Abuse Survey results:

Listed below are the five most frequently reported “yes” responses for the memories, possible aftereffects, and personal experiences sections [of the survey].

Memories

• Receiving physical abuse from perpetrators
• Sexual abuse by multiple perpetrators
• Being threatened with death if I ever talked about the abuse
• Witnessing physical abuse by perpetrators on other victims

Possible Aftereffects

• Sleep problems
• Painful body memories
• Posttraumatic stress disorder
• Unusual fears
• Beliefs indoctrinated by perpetrator(s)

The five most frequently reported healing methods that were checked either “much help” or “great help” are:

• Individual Psychotherapy/Counseling
• Supportive Friends
• Creative Writing
• Personal Prayer/Meditation
• Journaling

As you can see, the most common elements of memories match what survivors of organized pedophilia most recall with the same aftereffects. Do you see the most helpful healing methods? That's all that is needed. It's a longer therapy process than most but it is psychotherapy. Yet, survivors are denied or greatly limited in their choices of finding a therapist trained and/or willing to work with clients with DID. There is no special ingredient to healing. No exorcism. Hospitalization may be needed but is not necessarily a component of healing.

It is known there are far more than 1,471 survivors worldwide. Many survivors do not have access to a computer and wouldn't have known of the survey. In many cases, if a survivor had heard of the survey, they wouldn't have been able to participate due to lack of computer knowledge. And there is the unknown number who have yet to begin to remember or "suicided" (committed suicide due to internal messages to self destruct).

Abuse at the hands of multiple pedophiles is more widespread. Considering 20 million Americans are believed to be victims of parental incest, one can only imagine what percentage adapted with DID. Even using the common statistic often refuted in the community of therapists who treat DID of 1 in 100 (of the entire population), that is a staggering statistic. Then translate that to worldwide.

DID is not rare. It is also not common. It just is. It is a response to repeated traumatic abuse in childhood. Incest victims meet that definition but not all incest begins prior to age 6. DID is not a choice. After a lifetime of unknown secrets, survivors must learn to remain mostly secretive to survive with a semi-normal life in society because of the skewed perception of DID. And that sucks even more than validation.

A special thanks to the brave souls who spent untold hours working on developing the survey and implementing it in a manner to be accepted into psychological publications for the world to know. If readers of this blog choose to visit the Extreme Abuse Survey results, be forewarned. Survivors were subjected to what is categorized as torture while young children. It's intense.

When the bough breaks

A new video to show what it's like for someone with previously unknown DID to begin remembering. I specifically made it without mentioning DID because maybe those who have been poisoned against the concept of DID might "hear" this message.

Did Steven get it right?

Steven Spielberg is behind a new "dark comedy" to air on Showtime, The United States of Tara. The main character is a wife and mother of two teenage kids who seems normal on the surface but actually suffers from dissociative identity disorder. The series follows Tara as she deals with her various personalities. In the pilot, her personalities include a teen girl and adult man who emerge at times of stress. I saw the teaser for the pilot last night.

Spielberg is known for his sensitivity in treating serious topics and his research. We can only hope that will hold true for this series. Those with DID certainly joke about it. We have to. And it's okay for those with DID to joke amongst themselves. I would dearly love to see this pilot present this topic with great sensitivity through humor and grace (words cited as commentary to announcement of this topic. The writer of the co-pilot is the person who wrote Juno which was a wonderful movie--serious issues with a sense of humor.

In looking for more about the new show, I found articles using the wrong terms (i.e. multiple personality syndrome). The personalities were described from an entertainment perspective: an aggressive male biker or promiscuous teenage girl or Martha Stewart-like homemaker. The same review described the series as Weeds meets Sybil. No premiere date can be found. Maybe I'll catch the preview again on Showtime with an air date.

Hmmm. I wonder if Tara is in therapy in the show? Would love to see the topic handled accurately and neither trivialized nor sensationalized.

In the thick of it

I won't ever have a way of knowing unless I'm led to an answer. But it's possible my one client's perps (who follow me because of my having advocated for her in the past), were part of my own abuse "network". It's only been 11 years I've been fully conscious in my life. I already know that my other actively abused client had a perp in her life who had been my role model neighbor when I was in high school. Katie is the 4-year-old alter of a former adult client. The gang of pedophiles to which she is connected against her will is headed by a man about 10 years younger than me. He would have been a 30-year-old pedophile when I was a 40-year-old dissociated victim.

I've lived in this area since high school. When my parents moved away, I know now my neighbor knew how to keep me in the fold. I was going on 30 then. When I "woke up", I was working full time, quite effectively and with much conscious praise, for a managed health care company. I had to take leave because of the conscious trauma of the first memories and having to learn how to return to work and somehow be okay. During that short-term leave, I began to do collages. One of my collages along with some internal narrative showed me a vice president of my company, an alter, something to do with foreign stocks, and the word SPIN.

The collage with all the symbols meant nothing to me. I could see things like NOK and "trading at the sound of the bell" and dollar signs. When I looked up NOK, I saw it was the symbol for Norwegian currency. The alter is on the phone and financial symbols are surrounding her. Someone has a finger over their lips. "Don't tell." I had not yet fully learned to understand how I received messages. Even though the collage told me a particular person at work was using the word "spin" with some phrase by telephone to cause me to make phone calls to what? Make stock or currency trades? For whom? Why?...It seemed too surreal to me.

I returned to work after leave. I interacted with this company officer by phone and in person to collaborate on a weekly project. One day, shortly after my return, he came to my desk, pulled up a chair, and we reviewed the project. No problem. Soon after he left, my phone rang. It was him. He wanted a change made but trusted me to write what he wanted to convey. As I was about to hang up, he said, "I trust you to put your spin on it." I stayed conscious, kinda laughed, hung up, and nearly passed out I got so dizzy. I had another picture of the adult female alter hanging upside down with the words "In spin we trust" under her. I trust you to put your spin... My collage and internal message were right on. I learned to trust internal messages very quickly after that.

The first company I worked for out of high school was for the same company where my neighbor worked. WTF? And look at the irony of my last job before having to give up life as I knew it for healing. Survivors scream for help healing while health care refuses to recognize the diagnosis of DID as requiring intensive therapy. And there I was at a managed care company being used in a dissociative state! That's as much as I know definitely about my former dissociated adult life. Exploitation for activities out of conscious awareness.

So I remained living in an area apparently entrenched in this crap for the past 40 years. I live among people who have seen me doing things I don't remember doing...kiddie porn is all I remember from childhood. But what if there are things out there now with me as an adult? I can't deal with that madness. I'm so upset just writing that thought. Both my father and the one survivor's parents worked in the same place. Their paths crossed in the 1970s but it could have been for at least 10 years. Does that mean we only lived places in my life where this stuff was going on? Pedophile community to pedophile community? Do they all know each other? Refer to each other if moving to a new area?

I had confirmation during very early healing that all levels of organized pedophilia interact. I would imagine all pedophile communities surrounding a hub city are aware of each other. Possibly each specializes in some aspect of exploitation. This is what law enforcement needs to figure out. It's huge. It's scary. I walk among my perpetrators. My life has never been my own. Even as healed as I am, they make sure I know they are there. The only way I can do it is to say f*ck them and walk out the door. Some days that's difficult to do. Some days that's impossible to do. Some days I really can say WTF and go about my day. Life shouldn't have to be this difficult. I am only one survivor. I suspect the numbers of victims (children and adults) is in the hundreds of thousands rather than thousands who don't know they are even being used. It's sickening.

Had I known early in my healing I was still in the thick of it, I doubt I could have handled it. I don't know how Katie and the adult of my former client's body handle that knowledge. I had originally thought all of my abuse happened when I was out of town (or taken away from home when younger). I couldn't imagine or even suspected it was local. My mind didn't allow me to go there. It was not until I was in grad school that those memories surfaced. At that point they were answers that made perfect sense. Also it was horrific processing that had been the case and it was outside my door. But I was strong enough to know it and choose to remain here where the rest of my life is. I don't think it matters if I'm here or I move. Someone's eyes from that world will be watching.

Once born into that world, the victim is theirs. Infancy until thirties or forties with some outliers. And add about ten years for strong healing. If we're lucky, we get a mostly conscious and peaceful retirement. It's so surreal to say; I'm sure it's surreal to hear. Even when not connected to a group, a child's future is sealed pretty much for the first three quarters of her life if DID is created from overwhelming abuse. This cannot ever be okay.