August 18, 2009
Posted in Depression, DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, emotional pain, Internal Communication, mental health, Self Injury, therapy, Trauma, trauma therapist tagged AbuseConsultants, AbuseConsultants.com, Anger, Blame, Chronic Depression, Depressed Parts, Depression, DID/MPD, Displacement, Displacement of Emotion, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dissociative System, Dissociative Wall, Emotional Expression, Feeling Depressed, Healing, Internal Communication, Kathy Broady LCSW, MDD, Memory Work, Misdirected Anger, Projection, Self Injury, Suicidal Thoughts, Transference, Trauma memories, Trauma Survivor, trauma therapist, Trauma Therapy, Trauma Work, Treatment Goal for DID at 4:17 pm by Kathy Broady
Welcome to the second half of “Depression and Dissociative Identity Disorder”. The first seven tips have been previously posted. At this point in time, I will continue with the list of tips for how to specifically address chronic depression for trauma survivors with DID:
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8. As the memories surface, feelings will also surface. Expressing genuine emotion is key to working through depression. Crying tears of grief, screaming out in anger, quivering in fear may not feel comfortable, but holding these very real and intense emotions deep within will create long-term depression. Allowing these emotions to come out safely and appropriately – even if years after the original point of acquiring these emotions – will help.
9. In the appropriate time, let other parts of your dissociative system know about the information that was held by the depressed parts. Overcoming the dissociative barriers by sharing that information between the system parts is critical in your long-term healing. The more that your internal system shares with each other, the more you all can work together towards healing. The full story line does not have to be shared immediately with everyone. However, keeping pockets of dissociated information will continue to create an underlying cause for chronic depression.
10. Your feelings will need lots and lots of processing time. Talk, cry, draw, write, vocalize what you are feeling as many hours and hours over time as you feel these feelings. If you have been holding your emotions in for years of time, it will take oodles of time for these feelings to be worked through. Talking about it once or twice won’t be enough. Pushing feelings back down into non-expression will create more depression. While it will be very new territory to learn how to express your feelings, it is a necessary step.
11. Learn new rules about the expression of feelings. For example, in the past, when you were at risk of being hurt by your perpetrators, you most likely learned that it was not safe to express anger towards those that violently abused you. And yes, in that time frame, when you were likely to express direct injury from your perpetrators, it was safest for you to push those angry feelings deep within. At that time, that was a good decision. However, once you are away from your perpetrators, and the risk of ongoing abuse is no longer prominent, it is both essential and ok to express anger at your perpetrators’ atrocious, criminal behavior. Your healing will require that you remember to adjust with your changing circumstances, including creating new rules for expression
12. Learn to direct your anger at an appropriate target, even if that means starting with a “generic” unnamed target. Talk with your therapist about the variety of anger-expression techniques that allow your anger to be vocalized without creating harm to anyone else. Learning to express your feelings does not give you permission to take it out on whoever is there. The more you can express your anger directly towards the perpetrators that harmed you, the more effective it will be. Likewise, misdirecting your anger towards the wrong target (ie: someone who was not responsible for your abuse or injuries), will only create more problems for you, and will harm a lot of innocent people in the process. For example, getting angry with your children or your therapist will not resolve the anger you feel towards your parents.
13. As a continuation of tip #12, be willing to learn specifically about transference, projection, displacement of emotion, etc. Survivors who have had years of repressed emotion due to duress and abuse will truly need to practice expressing their emotions properly, and will need to learn when they are misdirecting their emotions. All survivors that were not allowed to express anger directly naturally learned to displace any display of anger in sideward ways. Realize that you will continue to get this mixed up for awhile. Be very aware that you might first take your anger out on safer targets. These mistakes are to be expected, and not a “fault” of yours, but it is still your responsibility to learn more accurate skills. Making the mistake of blaming the wrong person will only add to your depression. It will leave the deeper feelings unprocessed, unaddressed, and unhealed, thereby creating the foundation for ongoing depression and pain.
14. Replace the years of trauma and abuse with your own preferred people and activities that you enjoy. Once your life is full of happier, more meaningful things, you won’t feel as depressed. This probably will not happen quickly or easily, and you might have to learn how to live again. It might feel like you are learning to live for the very first time. You might have to learn how to love, or how to experience joy, or how to play, or how to forgive, or how to explore, etc. The more you can fill your life with activities of your own choosing, the less depressed you will feel.
15. Be sure to encourage all of your insiders to have their own individual healing process. Let each of them work through their own traumas, their own feelings, and let each of them find new and more positive interests in life. As each individual part of you experiences less depression, the whole of you will experience less depression. If you let only some parts heal, the whole of you will still be affected by the parts that were not given the chance to work through their healing. Remember, as split and divided as you might feel, you are still all connected within the same one body and the same one brain. To truly overcome depression, all of your insiders need the chance to overcome their pain.
Depression can be very debilitating.
Healing your trauma issues will be fundamental to overcoming the effects of the chronic depression.
In other words, in my opinion, you will continue to struggle with depression if you have unresolved trauma issues. If your dissociative symptoms have a significant negative impact on your ability to function, the liklihood of your having a significant level of major depression (MDD) is also present.
It is true that there may be other reasons for your depression in addition to trauma. (Please note: those topics were not addressed in this blog).
However, it is safe to assume that if you have unresolved trauma issues, you will most likely have chronic depression. And, the less unresolved trauma in your life, the less depression you’ll experience.
So….. get to work on addressing your DID / trauma issues. You’ll feel better for it!!
__________
By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
www.AbuseConsultants.com
www.SurvivorForum.com
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June 20, 2009
Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, mental health, Physical Abuse, Ritual Abuse, sexual abuse, Trauma, trauma therapist tagged Abuse, AbuseConsultants, AbuseConsultants.com, Amnesiac Walls, Anger, Back-stabbing, Believing a Lie, Betrayal, Blame, Denial, Detachment, DID/MPD, Dissociation, dissociative disorders, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dissociative Survivors, Dissociative Walls, Emotional Abuse, emotional pain, Family that Lies, Friends that Lie, Honesty, Kathy Broady, Lying, Lying to Yourself, multiple personality disorder, Perpetrators, Physical Abuse, Projection, PTSD, Ritual Abuse, Self-delusion, Self-protection, sexual abuse, Sexually Abused, split personality, splitting, The Splitting Process, Trauma, Trauma Survivors, Truth at 12:22 pm by Kathy Broady
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What makes it difficult for trauma survivors with dissociative identity disorder to know the truth?
How easy is it to trick someone with DID with a lie?
When are survivors lying to themselves?
When does dissociation block out information to know the difference?
When does pain, especially emotional pain, become the deciding factor in what survivors believe, regardless of truth?
When does the viciousness of perpetrators demand and create particular beliefs and realities?
Is dissociation built on lying to yourself?
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I recently saw a situation where a DID survivor could not accept the truth. Despite the facts that pointed to the obvious, the dissociative survivor was determined to believe what her closest confidants had said. She trusted these loved ones completely, but these were the very people who were completely invested in hiding the secret from her. Accepting the truth would have been far too painful, and she fought that reality with all the strength and vigor that she had. She was angry. She threw out rationalizations. She projected blame onto others. She railed back through time, pulling out circumstantial evidence that could support her beliefs. She argued like a court room lawyer. She completely protected her position with every psychological defense available to her.
And she believed the lie.
Because to not believe the lie would have been utterly and completely devastating for her.
So she couldn’t let herself go there. Not even for a moment.
She absolutely, without question, had to deny the truth and hear only what she could stand to hear. She had to stay true to her preferred beliefs and rationalizations. She couldn’t risk losing everything by believing the conflicting information. The cost of believing the truth was too high. To believe the truth would have hurt too much, so it was necessary for her to completely refute the truth.
At first I wondered how this survivor could be so staunchly set in her beliefs, even in the face of clear and direct evidence of the contrary. I marveled at the intensity of her denial, and felt a deep sadness for her. I was amazed at how completely sold she was on the lie – she would have fought to the death to defend that as truth.
But then I understood.
Believing the truth would have been enormously painful for her.
She would have had to believe that her loved ones betrayed her – that they hurt her beyond comprehension.
How could she believe that?
It would have cost her too much. To accept the betrayal would have meant she was alone. It would have completely broken her heart. It would have meant her loved ones abused her. It would have meant that her trust and faith in them was shattered. It would have created an emotional pain so huge that her body would have felt seared to the core. It would have left her feeling broken on more levels than words can say.
She would have wanted to die before accepting that truth as a reality.
Yet the truth was so obvious that it seemed undeniable, so it was mind boggling to see the intensity of the denial that could prevent her from seeing the truth standing right before her eyes.
And then I realized I was seeing something stronger than denial.
I was seeing the beginning of a dissociative split.
Dissociation – complete dissociation – is an emotional protection strategy that totally and completely removes painful realities from the mind and body of the survivor.
When the pain of accepting a trauma is too huge, dissociative people split. They get rid of the excruciatingly painful information by dissociating it. They don’t accept it as happening to them, and they make it be gone.
They completely refute the truth even as it is happening to them, and they completely separate that painful reality from themselves, blocking it off, locking it away, keeping it as far from themselves as possible. Thick dissociative walls keep that horrendous information away from them. It protects them from feeling that unbearable pain.
If they don’t want to believe they were being sexually abused, or physically abused, or spiritually abused, or emotionally abused, or ritually abused, they use that same intensity to tell themselves it wasn’t happening to them. It doesn’t belong to them. It was happening to someone else – anyone else – just not to them.
They weren’t betrayed by their loved ones. They weren’t hurt and destroyed by their loved ones. That just didn’t happen. Not to them. And if it happened to somebody else, they didn’t want to know about it. Not now, not ever. That bad news had to be totally and completely separated from themselves. It had to belong to someone that was not them. It could NOT be happening to them.
And so they protect themselves from the heart-wrenching truth.
They need to believe the lie. They want to believe the lie. The lie feels better than the truth.
Believing the lie that “it didn’t happen” is the very foundation of dissociation.
As understandable as it may be, every time you split, you believed the lie that it wasn’t happening to you.
Ouch.
It still hurts. It hurts a lot.
And yet, finding the courage to face the truth in the present is as necessary for your healing as dissociating the truth away once was necessary for your survival.
__________
By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
www.AbuseConsultants.com
www.SurvivorForum.com
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December 11, 2008
Posted in DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, mental health, therapy, Therapy and Counseling, Trauma tagged Acceptance, Anger, Blame, Cognitive Distortion, Comfort, Commitment, Compassion, Controlling, Denial, DID / MPD, dissociate, dissociative, dissociative disorders, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Distortion, Facing the Truth, Fear, Gentle, Healing, heartbreak, Honest, Hurt, Kathy Broady, Listening, Manipulated, Memories, multiple personality disorder, pain, Painful Truth, Peace, Perpetrator, Projection, Protective, Safety, Shame, Strong, Terrified, Therapeutic Alliance, Therapeutic Process, Therapist, therapy, Trauma Survivor, trauma therapist, treatment, treatment for DID at 11:52 pm by Kathy Broady
What is therapy? What is a therapist? And how can you tell if they’re any good?
In my experience, therapy is about speaking the unspeakable. It’s the telling of things that you haven’t had the safety or the opportunity to tell before. It’s expressing your deepest feelings without have to edit or omit or pretend for the sake of someone else. It’s exploring within yourself to find who you are, and who the other parts of you are. It’s looking at the painful truths of your life, coming to grips with even the most shame-filled realities of the ways you were hurt and the ways you hurt others—and then being able to move ahead with a greater peace, more resolve, a quiet solidity, and an acceptance of what has happened in years gone by. It’s the process of facing the past while also allowing it to fade away, becoming free from it, instead of being consumed by it or chained to it or terrified of it. It requires seeing and knowing some very harsh realities, but helps you find a way to be solidly ok with yourself anyway and to live a full and happy life despite the horror and pain.
A therapist is a listening person who can hear what you have to say and help you to process your experiences and move beyond them, a companion in your pain and a witness to your truth.
A safe trauma therapist is one who can contain your feelings and experiences, however intense, and remain themselves, present in the room with you. It is one in whom you can have the confidence of knowing they are on your side, as well as the reassurance of knowing they are their own confident person who will not be easily steamrolled, bullied, or deceived. Your listening person can’t be fooled by denial, manipulated by fear, scared off by anger, or accepting of projections. They must be strong enough to handle your pain, your emotions, your truths, without falling into their own emotional traps, and yet they need to be gentle enough to provide genuine compassion and comfort. Your listening person must be kind, but firm. Flexible, but unwavering. Provoking, but protective. Accepting, but honest.
Trauma therapy is not just about the recovery and processing of memories. It is also about learning to think and act in different and better ways. Emotional fallacies, cognitive distortions, controlling manipulations, and psychological defenses all have to be addressed. In therapy, your greatest wounds and your worst behaviors both will be exposed, examined, and engaged. Ouch—that’s really hard to do. No wonder therapy hurts.
Therapy is an enormously difficult personal challenge. It requires courage and willpower by the bucketful. Beyond that, it also takes a great personal commitment on your part to hold on to the therapeutic alliance through the difficult times. Sometimes this persistence can mean going against what feels “right”—so many of you have learned through hard experience that trust is a myth and caring is a painful lie.
And although healing therapy is desperately sought out by trauma survivors, and although it can be a life-saving, heart-warming, and incredibly powerful process—within each and every trauma survivor, there will also be long lists of reasons, recognized or unrecognized, conscious or deeply hidden, why therapy is not ok, not necessary, or not helpful for them. So it can be all too easy, when the going gets particularly tough, to turn from the onslaught of truth and from the therapy that has unleashed it. It is too easy, sometimes, to deflect the truth onto someone or something else, discard that person or thing from your life as you no doubt wish you could do with the truth and just keep running.
Your commitment to therapy will be tested again and again. I commend each and every one of you who daily move forward on blind faith, against what feels like your better instincts, to find true healing.
Externally, there may other challenges to face. There may be others in your life that don’t want you to move forward. Maybe your family likes the status quo, and they don’t want you challenging their norm. Maybe your perpetrators don’t want you to realize the truth of what happened, or maybe they don’t care if you remember, as long as you blame yourself for their crimes. Or maybe someone is invested in controlling you now. They certainly wouldn’t want you to learn healthier ways of thinking and feeling.
It is crucial that you are willing to be honest with yourself in your healing—about yourself and about others in your life—even when painful truths are revealed. As hard as it is to do, facing the truth is the only way to achieve full healing.
__________
by:
Kathy Broady, LCSW
www.AbuseConsultants.com
www.SurvivorForum.com
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