Dissociative What?
Note: I was honored to be asked to preach and give four lectures at Bay View Michigan Association, a Chautauqua community, from July 24th through the 28th, 2022. The sermon title is “Remembering the Tough Stuff” and the lectures are entitled: Dissociative What?, Pathways to Recovery, Is Forgiveness the Goal?, and Let It End Here (prevention). I will post one of these offerings each month from August through November. Today’s post is the first lecture delivered on July 25, 2022. Special thanks to Dissociative Writers Kim and Surita who gave permission for me to use their writing. ~ Lyn
I’d like to begin with a very short passage from Psalm 139.
For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
The first time I heard this scripture read aloud was about 25 years ago when I walked into Dan Moser’s church for the first time. We didn’t know each other from Adam. I don’t remember what he preached about that morning, but I left knowing I was fearfully and wonderfully made, created by a God who loved me just the way I am.
This was good news to me. I was raised by a father who was atheist. He taught me that “people who believe in God are either stupid or weak” and, of course, I didn’t want to be either. For small children, their parents are God of a sort, so I followed my parents’ teachings and became an atheist too. My father was sometimes rageful, extremely controlling, and rarely cracked a smile. My mother was submissive and in thrall to his power. We all knew not to cross his line which was complete and total obedience. The idea that I might be fearfully and wonderfully made, and that God loved me just the way I was, was unbelievable. The language I discovered in church was new, and it was living water to my parched spirit.
By the time I walked through the doors of Dan’s church and learned that I was fearfully and wonderfully made, I had lived through more than 16 years of craziness, or at least that’s the term I used to describe it. Crazy. I had morphed from a happy wife and mother to a person I didn’t know. I felt unreal. Often, it was like I was sitting on a perch in the corner of the ceiling watching this wretched woman go through the motions of life. My thinking and feelings didn’t match. Sometimes 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 streams of thought went through my head at the same time – it felt chaotic. My children, whom I loved more than life itself, seemed distant to me; I couldn’t touch them through some mysterious veil that always seemed to come between us. That was heartbreaking. I had body pain most of the time and amnesia for large parts of my childhood. I was chronically suicidal and attempted to take my life once.
Lament
Leading up to my suicide attempt, I wrote this poem that was really just some scribbling in my journal, entitled Lament.
Pretend I never existed.
I never existed.
Don’t hurt me anymore.
Are you there?
Is someone there?
Do not give me gifts.
Do not cry over me. I am not here.
Do not drink with me or laugh with me.
I am not here.
I never was.
By the grace of God, I was unsuccessful at suicide, and a part of me who was grateful to be alive said, “Carpe diem, seize the day. That’s never going to happen again. I’m going to live until I die.” Another part of me said, “Ha, you can’t even commit suicide well. You failed at too. You’re pathetic. What a wimp.”
Now, at first glance, this might have seemed an odd thing for me to say to myself because I actually was doing quite a few things well. I hung in there through an ugly divorce and parented my children the best I could. I earned a master’s degree in elementary education. I helped start a Quaker school with parents who were looking for something different for their children. I became their first head teacher and, later, the first full-time head of school.
So I wasn’t a failure, except at home, in my inner world. There, I was pathetic when I couldn’t relate to my precious children the way I wanted to. There, I was a wimp when I crawled up into a fetal position because I couldn’t cope with the world that hurt me everywhere I turned. There, I was a failure who couldn’t seem to take the bull by the horns and live life with any sense of coherency.
By the time I walked through the doors of Dan’s church and learned that I was fearfully and wonderfully made, I had spent 30 days in the women’s unit of a psychiatric hospital, stabilizing my totally unstable self. After discharge, I left the Quaker school, moved to a new community, and taught in a public-school classroom. I found a therapist who seemed to understand me and, later, I was diagnosed with multiple personality disorder (MPD) by a psychiatrist associated with the hospital. Several years later, MPD was renamed dissociative identity disorder (DID) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, and it is my current diagnosis. With my therapist’s help, I began the hard work of healing the effects of chronic childhood sexual abuse, getting to know the parts of me (or alters) who held the memories of my past, addressing my deep trust issues, and managing triggers that so often knocked me off-course.
In spite of it all, I managed to earn my state school administrator’s certificate and become the principal of a 545-student elementary school. That is where I was when I walked through the doors of Dan’s church and discovered that I was, indeed, fearfully and wonderfully made.
Some Facts About DID
Most of you probably think that DID is some rare, exotic disorder that looks like demon possession, acts like Sybil in the movie of the same name, and is something you’ll only run across today, at Bay View Chautauqua, where the planners decided to invite me to give a lecture. You might assume that anyone with DID really is crazy and can’t accomplish anything of substance in the real world. You may have heard that DID is a controversial diagnosis and people with the disorder are just looking for attention. Right?
Wrong. All of this is false.
DID is not rare. Research shows that between 1-5% of the world population has either diagnosed or undiagnosed DID, putting it next to bipolar disorder or schizophrenia in terms of prevalence. It is the mind’s natural protective response to chronic, horrible abuse in childhood.
DID is not demon possession. Rather than outside forces compelling the person to act differently, it’s internal parts or alters who actually saved the child’s life who sometimes “front,” or take control in adulthood. Our voices or alters are not outside of us, they are a part of us.
A DID diagnosis does not mean a person is crazy or can’t accomplish in the real world. The very fact that we have multiple selves enables us to manage complex tasks. I was able to excel in teaching and administration because I had parts who took on those roles while other parts of me were decompensating and in extreme pain. In our writers workshops for people with dissociative disorders, we have artists, musicians, therapists, and college professors with DID.
It's true that DID has been a controversial diagnosis over the last century but solid research in the past thirty years suggests that skepticism is rooted in personal opinion rather than scientific fact. Not only has DID’s existence been documented worldwide by independent researchers using validated diagnostic tools but DID and other dissociative disorders have been linked with chronic early childhood trauma through a variety of means, including neurobiology. People with DID exhibit different brain activation patterns depending on which part or personality is fronting during the assessment.
It’s not only likely that you know or have known someone with DID prior to today, it is almost certain. Think about it. With percentages like 1-5%, a church sanctuary with 100 people worshiping probably has 1-3 people who have diagnosed or undiagnosed DID. Researchers say the number is probably higher because most people are in the system for 7 years before receiving an accurate diagnosis. You probably wouldn’t know your friend in the pew has DID, or your colleague, or a family member, or someone you socialize with, because we don’t tell. We don’t even know ourselves for many years, and once we learn of our diagnosis, we are often ashamed and afraid. DID is the most misunderstood diagnosis and the stigma is huge. Who wants to lose their job or their friendships to this?
DID?
Kim is a dissociative writer. In this poem she calls “DID?” she describes the experience of slowly becoming aware of her condition.
Though I question frequently
It is becoming clearer to me
I am of more than one mind
As it has been for a long long time
Indeed, we are many
Divided, we conquered
Unspeakable challenges
Internal fractures, in duress
Led to seeming success
The past is past, and so is the need to split to succeed
So if DID isn’t demon possession, isn’t rare, doesn’t mean a person can’t accomplish in the real world, is scientifically validated, but isn’t likely to present itself so you know, for sure, that someone has it, then what is it? What is DID?
Dissociation
Let’s get back to basics and dissect the word dissociation. Dissociation is a normal, temporary state of body-mind separation. We all do it. Imagine yourself sitting in a lecture with a boring professor droning on and on. You’re by the window watching children play soccer. You get so absorbed with the kids kicking the ball, your mind literally leaves your body to be with them. You leave the professor and the rest of the students behind to go outside where there’s something interesting going on. Eventually, you come back and re integrate into your classroom that you briefly left out of boredom. Dissociation can also result from repetition – repeatedly doing the same mundane activity over and over again. You daydream. You leave. You disappear. You come back again, but only after you’ve had some relief from repetition or boredom.
Because dissociation is a temporary split between body and mind, it also serves a protective function. The soldier on the battlefield may dissociate to protect himself from the horrors of war, but he comes home and carries some of that dissociation with him in post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The same for a woman who is raped. She dissociates during the rape to protect herself from the full impact of what’s happening, but she may carry a little bit of that dissociation back into her real life in PTSD. Both the soldier and the woman who was raped are examples of trauma and they use dissociation unconsciously in order to survive.
Children & Dissociation
When children experience trauma, they often do the same thing. They dissociate. If they experience the trauma once or twice, and if they have a loving caregiver to help them process their trauma, they will often heal from it and leave it in the past.
If, on the other hand, the trauma is repeated over and over again, if they have no one who is sympathetic whom they can talk to about it, if the person who perpetrates the trauma is their parent or someone else they rely on, then there’s no way for them to heal from the trauma. A spectrum of dissociative disorders comes to the rescue, the trauma goes directly into their bodies, and, in the case of DID, their minds split into parts.
It’s actually functional for the child to do that because a part of the child can go back into the family or community completely unaware of what happened, while another part or parts hold the memory of the abuse, or the overwhelming emotion attached to it, or a skill or talent that enables the child to function in some other way. Because the child’s mind is not fully formed until the age of 8 to 10, these parts or compartments are able to solidify, so to speak, and remain separate from the rest of the child’s mind.
Often, but not always, the parts have names, they may or may not interact with other parts of the child’s mind, and they may have a mundane or elaborate inner world, depending on the child. Of course, the part of the child who faces the public, the part of the child who the child thinks he or she is, has no idea these other parts exist.
Usually, the child doesn’t know about the parts until adolescence at the earliest, and more often until in their 20’s, 30’s, or 40’s when the inner system loses its cohesiveness and falls apart, as happened to me.
Memory
Yesterday, my message in worship was about the importance of plumbing our depths to find the memories we’ve lost either intentionally or unintentionally, and how that helps us heal and move forward. It’s in “what we’ve lost” that we find “what we need” in order to heal. So let’s talk about memory for a little bit.
Many people who’ve experienced trauma of any sort have memory loss around the trauma. Here’s why. The front brain is in charge of explicit memory – what you had for breakfast this morning, where you plan to go when this week is over, what your spouse asked you three weeks ago. Explicit memory creates a narrative. It may be unreliable because explicit memory changes with the wind, but it tells a story that helps define who we are. Implicit memory, on the other hand, resides in the back brain. It includes all the facets of the limbic system, including traumatic memory.
Traumatic memory doesn’t automatically go to the front brain to form a narrative. Instead, when something happens, the limbic system instantaneously makes a decision. If the event is benign, it goes to the front brain to be stored as explicit memory. If it’s dangerous, it is sent back into the body for a fight, flight or freeze response. In the case of a small child, the response is almost always freeze since the child has little capability to fight or run away. The child makes themself smaller and lets the abuse happen, sometimes splitting off the explicit narrative memory, and letting the body hold the traumatic memory.
I Don’t Know Who I Am
Here is a reading from one of Surita’s alters:
I don’t know who I am, why I’m here, or where I came from.
I only know I am aware of others and that I ache.
I see and hear babies and young ones crowded together and crying.
I see and hear older ones who sob silently, embarrassed.
There are so many of us trapped, it’s hard to believe we all even fit.
There is so much fear I can smell it.
Nowhere in here is there light, except the one they call Sara.
And even she can’t see it ... although she holds it.
With so much terror and pain, it’s easy to see why so many of us want to die.
In order to qualify for a DID diagnosis, a person has to have two or more distinct personalities and some form of amnesia. Amnesia can include losing time in the present day when different alters front and the host personality doesn’t remember what an alter did or even that an alter exists. It can also be amnesia between parts or personalities as I just described or when there are barriers between the consciousness of parts even if there’s no loss of time. It can be loss of a significant chunk of memory during a period of the person’s life, or loss of memory of the abuse.
That’s why I had over-the-top emotions, constant body pain, memory fragments, and triggers that incapacitated me. That’s why I didn’t know I had been abused. That’s why I, and so many others who’ve experienced any kind of traumatic event, may have difficulty remembering what happened.
Our bodies remember it. We may have flashbacks. We may get anxious or depressed. We may get triggered when the slightest thing reminds us unconsciously of the trauma. We may even have memory fragments that seem out of context and unreal. But in many cases, we don’t have full-on explicit memory – a cohesive narrative – of what happened. It takes a long time in deep, trauma-informed therapy to unearth the story and put the pieces together. This process of remembering what’s been buried deep within us is how we begin to heal.
Wrap-Up
Now 25 years after I walked into Dan’s church and learned that I was fearfully and wonderfully made, I can report that I continued my healing journey through the wilderness. My 20 or so alters have more or less integrated. I’ve healed my deep trust issues and I’ve mastered my triggers. I’m real, authentic, and feel the full range of emotions, usually in proportion to whatever’s going on around me. Thanks, in part, to Dan, I went to seminary and am ordained in the UCC where I served two churches and became a certified spiritual director. I remarried but lost my second husband suddenly and unexpectedly four days before our first anniversary. I remarried again eight years later and my third husband is here this week cheering me on. I’ve created a happy and sane life for myself, for which I’m deeply, profoundly, grateful.
When I retired from education and ministry, I wrote my memoir, Crazy: Reclaiming Life from the Shadow of Traumatic Memory, in part to make sense of my life, and in part to help others with DID, their loved ones, and their therapists. To that end, I have a website, write a weekly blog, and facilitate writers workshops for a group I started called Dissociative Writers. Today and throughout the week, I’ll share snippets of writings from these writers – with their permission – so you can hear it from the people in the trenches.
I also wrote Crazy to educate the general public – like you – so together we can build our knowledge of DID, share accurate information with each other, and stop sensationalizing it. This is how we erase the stigma which, in turn, helps people with DID feel safe and heal. Education is always the key to embracing one another as God’s precious children. Understanding mental illness, in general, and DID, in particular, is the first step toward acknowledging that God loves us just the way we are because, after all, each one of us is fearfully and wonderfully made.
There is much more to my story and the stories of the millions of people with dissociative disorders who, often, lead quiet lives of desperation. We’ll touch on a variety of pieces this week, including pathways to healing, forgiveness and what that really means, and how we can help end the carnage of childhood abuse here and now.
This is a happy ending story. I hope you’ll come back tomorrow and hear the next episode as we delve into Pathways to Recovery.
Anthology Submissions!
DW is receiving submissions for the 2023 Anthology from DW subscribers. Please send your submission, along with the completed Submission Form and signed Agreement to Publish to Gabby, no later than September 16, 2022. You can find these documents on www.groupeasy.com Documents/Anthology Documents. For more information about the anthology submissions, contact Gabby.
Group Easy Community Platform
DW has decided to move to a community platform called Group Easy that offers us a secure way to email one another, post calendar events, store organizational documents, upload and download writing submissions, and more. Sometime in the month of August, subscribers will receive an email invitation you to join Group Easy. We encourage you to take advantage of the invitation. We will offer brief tutorials at the end of each workshop to help people become comfortable with Group Easy. We hope all subscribers will sign on sometime in the month of August or September. By October, we will transition fully to Group Easy and give it a two month trial. At the end of November, we will decide if Group Easy is serving our needs or if we wish to terminate our use of their platform. We want to assure everyone that we will offer as much support, including personal tutorials if needed, to help people become comfortable with this new community opportunity!
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And he took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.”
Luke 22: 19
Lyn