Healing from DID sucks. It’s one mindbender after another coming out of the muck of subconsciousness and flopping into reality. Those of us in that journey are left figuring out what to do with the crap that just landed in our heads.
My journey is into its 14th year and I am still being stunned. I decided to share my most defining moments (i.e. the ones most difficult to accept and process and move on). This sharing is meant to help educate those with loved ones trudging through the muck to a more healed place and perhaps let survivors who are on the road to healing feel validated.
#1 My father sexually abused me. It is freakish to have a memory of something that has been hidden within amnesia for more than four decades. But when that first memory surfaced, it made complete sense of all the blanks in my therapy up to that point. The sexual dysfunction that kicked in shortly after each of my marriages…the resistance I felt to working on the resistance…the seeming jealousy my father had for my teenage boyfriends that sometimes ended in rage directed at me.
For me, learning I had DID was a relief which is a vastly different response from most. However, the two following defining moments created within me the response most have to learning they have DID.
#2 My father took me to graveyards where people were chanting. I had never heard the words “ritual abuse” before but was certain what I was remembering was true after diving into research about it cross-referenced with my own conscious timeline. I was still thinking he was just a sociopath and I got dragged into his world. Learning the government was part of some of the cults unnerved me because he was career military.
#3 The most shocking realization is the bigger picture. I was intentionally made DID through a government sanctioned program…likely MK-Ultra which went underground after the Senate hearings in the 70s. Understanding how our government condoned the kind of trauma/torture/horror I was remembering to create dissociation and alters just leaves me speechless. What else can one say? It’s evil. It’s licensed pedophilia at its most benign.
And it was after THAT realization that I came to the ever haunting: Who am I really and what was my reality if the life I remember was only the “cover story”. Everything at that moment becomes a lie: family, relationships, ability to trust. Who is safe to turn to for help? It’s shocking and terrifying.
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| "They spun a web for me." Coldplay, Trouble |
#4 I met other survivors of government abuse (which included ritual abuse) online through a support group. I was blessed to meet most of the people from that group in person at a conference in 1998. Some remain my friends today. It was in that group that some shared memories of Mengele. I chose to believe that another abuser used Mengele’s name to make it more unbelievable. I was raised Jewish and the thought of that Nazi’s hands being near me made my blood curdle.
Through research I learned of Operation Paperclip and had validation that Mengele was part of that ushering of Nazis to the U.S. and other havens in exchange for their “knowledge” gained from their experiments in medicine (at the concentration camps) as well as rocket science. I also continued my then quest of acquiring and watching every video I could find on the perp names that came up for me. Many of my collages pointed to Mengele but still no memories surfaced. It was my second or third video on Mengele’s life that included a clip of him singing a song. When I heard it, I can’t explain the horror and chaos that happened within my being. It took weeks to settle down from knowing I was not only in his presence but he had touched me, hurt me, and programmed me…early childhood programming. It still curdles my blood.
Once I accepted I was an intentionally made multiple by my own government with my father’s approval and active involvement, programmed to do the bidding of the government, primarily covert and possibly illegal activities, the rest was undoing what was done to me. There was sort of a “same old, same old” feel to finding programming and dismantling through the help of insiders and freeing the alters connected to it. I was surprised at how much self-destruct programming I ran into, but it was not a defining moment. With the help of my therapist, we undid anything that came up. I was very proud that I had healed to integration in 2003 without any hospitalizations.
I was proud to earn my Masters in Counseling and went to work immediately. Most who follow me know of my short-lived psychotherapist career due to extreme medical issues from 2007 to 2008 which caused me to be on disability. It also created a setback in my integration and alters began appearing again. All was going smoothly with that aspect of healing until defining moment #5.
#5 News of father’s death in early February compounded with my existing level of depression at the time. His death triggered a program unknown to me, although I now see it in many collages on Polyvore over the past years but had no idea what I was seeing. The program first went off on March 10 when I watched myself overdose on four handfuls of pills interrupted by my partner who called 911. It happened so quickly it made my head spin.
In the few days after discharge from the hospital to be seen by a facility specializing in dissociation, my Polyvore sets revealed the overdose was the first in a chain reaction of suicide methods meant to be implemented by alters still loyal to the abusers until their mission was accomplished. I was terrified to be in my own body. I felt environmentally safe at the trauma center but believed my body could stop my heart or create an aneurysm. It took nearly two weeks at the center before the programming was disarmed.
The truly defining point of all of that was recently realizing I was only three years old when the groundwork to that program was put in place. It was 1955 and my father’s death was 55 years later which also freaked me out. Father’s death or 55 years after “installing” the program, whichever came first? Perhaps I had a double whammy that both happened in the same year.
Regardless, I watched myself swallow those pills and didn’t fight back. That will always stay with me.
While take pills apparently didn’t have me fighting for my life, the methods of suicide that went with the other alters in line terrified me. I had thought I was fine from the time of realizing the extent of the program to seeing my therapist again to undo it. But it went off and bam I was in the hospital. Am still reeling. Even though I know I am now safe, my worst fear did come true. I can hope all is dismantled. Another program went off after I was discharged but my therapist and I successfully stopped it. Now the parts are healing and telling me more of my programming history. And I realized today it is two days shy of 5/5. It all means something. Am confident that second program that surfaced after discharge had a “deadline” of 5/5. Thank you to my alters who chose not to die and helped me with the information to stop it.
Is there more? If so, can it possibly be stronger? I have to believe all is well and believe in my healing abilities to tell me otherwise If the time comes. As defining and awful as these moments during the journey have been, they have not defined me. I am not the evil they wanted me to be. The journey is not over and I am waiting for a new antidepressant to kick in so I’m still having passive suicidal thoughts but once actively suicidal alters are healing. Yes, healing sucks, but I am going to Paris next Spring. And of my own free will. Guess I can’t ask for more than that. There can be good in life with DID.
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