December 15, 2008
Internet Safety for Survivors with DID / MPD
Hi Everyone,
I am busily working on some new posts in response to the excellent comments made by the readers here. You have been asking good questions and making thought-provoking points. I’m looking forward to responding to as many of these comments as I can. Thank you for your active participation – it is really exciting to see so many folks showing up around here already!!!
In the meantime, since all of you are frequently online, and clearly many of you are dissociative trauma survivors, I want to encourage you to read some very well written articles about internet safety and internet predators:
- Internet Predators: They Really Are Everywhere
- Internet Predators: One Way They Work
- Internet Predators and Child Alters: 10 Ideas to Keep Them Safe
These excellent articles are all available on Rocking Complacency, http://rockingcomplacency.wordpress.com. For that matter, this entire blog is good. If you are up to reading through the whole thing, I certainly recommend it!
The whole subject of internet predators is highly troubling and deeply disturbing. They work relentlessly to discredit the helpers, to prey on the vulnerable, to manipulate the gullible, to control the unsuspecting, and to deceive the needy while greedily feeding their own dark agendas. Dissociative trauma survivors are particularly at risk for getting used and hurt in these ways.
Solid prevention information / education can be enormously useful. It can help you prevent some serious harm, and can give you tips on how to better protect your system.
During my years of working with DIDer’s online, I have become aware of too many situations where naïve trusting DID survivors were led down the garden path by someone they trusted, only to find out, painfully too late, that their “friend” was an internet predator. It seems that warning people that are caught in the midst of this process falls on deaf ears – they get hooked and tangled in their predator’s web before they even realize it. They can’t see it happening, and all too often, they’ve been well-coached ahead of time on how to respond when an outsider catches wind of the dangers they are in.
By recommending the above-mentioned articles, my hopes are that many of you will become more aware of the danger signs ahead of time. If you recognize a predator’s tricks and ploys as they happen, you will have a greater chance of removing yourself and your system from their grasp, and staying safe.
Safety first!
__________
by:
Kathy Broady LCSW
