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.