June 17, 2012
Posted in Child Alters, Depression, DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, emotional pain, Family Members of Trauma Survivors, Physical Abuse, Self Injury, sexual abuse, Trauma tagged Abandonment, Abuse, Addictions, Anger, Anxiety, Body Memories, Child Abuse, Childhood rules, Depression, DID / MPD, DID Survivors, Dissociation, Dissociative Identity Disorder, emotional pain, Family rules, Father Issues, Father's Day 2012, Fathers, Fathers as Perpetrators, Fathers that abandon their children, Fathers who are abusive, Fear, Flashbacks, Happy Father's Day, Healing, Internal Systems, Kathy Broady, Making your own decisions, Painful, Perpetrators, Physical Abuse, Saying No, Self Destruction, Self Esteem, sexual abuse, splitting, Splitting Process, Trauma Survivors at 10:44 am by Kathy Broady
It’s Father’s Day, 2012.
Fathers. Fathers are as difficult a topic for dissociative trauma survivors as mothers.
I decided I would recognize this day by writing briefly about a few of the common but complicated topics connected to fathers.
I can feel the shuddering going on already.
How difficult are these situations for you?
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A. Saying no to your father
According to childhood rules, it’s really not allowed, typically, for DID survivors to even consider saying no to their father. It’s a scary topic. This is a “rule” that gets taught very early on, and takes years of time to challenge. All too often, this very idea is tied to trauma, and abuse, and a whole lot of fear.
And yet, it really is okay, especially as you become an adult yourself, to make your own decisions about your life, and about what you’ll do (or not do). The older you are, the less say-so that your father should have in terms of making the rules for your life. Easily said, but oh so very difficult to do, especially if you have the type of father that doesn’t want to relinquish that position of power and authority.
But still, your life belongs to you, and at some point, it really is okay to claim that for yourself. You don’t have to believe what your father believed. You don’t have to spend your life following his rules or his directions. You don’t have to put his teachings above what you want to decide for yourself. It is okay, and important, for you to become your own person, and to establish your own sense of self separate from your father. To do this, means that at some point in time, you will likely have to say “No” to your father and his preferences.
For many trauma survivors, the healing process is very dependent on you gaining more separation from your father, and being able to make decisions about your life based on what you think, not on what your father thinks.
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B. Having an Abusive Father
What about the trauma survivors whose fathers were their perpetrators?
What is your father is still one of your perpetrators?
Boy oh boy, it’s very difficult to think anything positive about Father’s Day when your father was (or is) one of your abusers. It becomes a day of pain, heartache, body memories, flashbacks, fear, and anxiety. Trauma city!
Being hurt, betrayed, and abused by either of your parents creates some of the deepest wounds, and some of the deepest splits within the dissociative system. There will often be parts in your system that completely agreed with and supported and even helped the father carry out abuse to various people in your system. There will be others in your system that were and probably still are terrified of the father. There will be others in your system that have absolutely no awareness of any abuse done by the father, and will defend his innocence with a vengeance. There could be others in your system that don’t even know that the father was their father – they will see him as some generic “man” that hurt them. There could also be others in your system that only remember the father as a good man, a decent person, a fun and caring person, a good man in the community, and any other variety of being good, just, and kind.
Having such extreme and varied views and experiences with the father creates a ton of internal conflict, making the necessity of splitting into different selves much more understandable. Having different parts, each containing their own experiences, and then keeping these parts separated from each other, is often an effort to minimize the turmoil caused by loving / hating / fearing / admiring the same person. It makes sense. How else would someone manage all the extremes?
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C. Being Abandoned by your Father
What about the fathers that simply abandoned their children?
This is a painful topic as well. It leads to feelings of nothingness, low self-esteem, anger, self-destruction, and confusion. Not having a father creates a hole in the heart – an emptiness that just doesn’t go away. To become used to this emptiness can create a type of apathy towards people that can lead to other types of problems in life and relationships. It can lead to addictive behaviors – drinking, drugging, sexual promiscuity – and any other behavior that tries to mask pain with impulsive “I want to feel good” options.
It’s almost impossible to understand how a father could leave you without struggling with thoughts about “am I bad?” or “it must be my fault” or “I made him go away”. Children internalize blame onto themselves, and many dissociative survivors grow far into adulthood before becoming able to shift this responsibility back onto the father instead of absorbing it into themselves. Not taking the blame for your father’s poor behavior is an important task in the healing journey.
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Father issues are not simple, and yet, very often, for trauma survivors, sorting out your father issues are very central to your healing. It’s difficult to understand or choose or create healthy family relationships when your whole life experience has been with a dysfunctional or abusive father. Fathers, even the absentee fathers, are very prominent in shaping your very sense of yourself. Your father isn’t nobody. He has had some very significant impact on your life.
When you were a child, you had very little say so about that.
Now, when you are older, and more adult, and more resourceful for yourself, now you can make new decisions that can redefine that relationship and its impact on you and your life, and the lives of your insiders.
Even if it is scary to address these topics, for your own healing, your health, and your well-being, it’s essential that you do.
I wish you the best in your healing journey.
Warmly,
Kathy
Copyright © 2008-2012 Kathy Broady and Discussing Dissociation
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June 20, 2010
Posted in Child Alters, Depression, DID Education, DID/MPD, Dissociative Identity Disorder, emotional pain, Family Members of Trauma Survivors, Introjects, Ritual Abuse, Self Injury, sexual abuse, therapy, Therapy and Counseling, Transference Issues, Trauma tagged Anxiety, Body Memories, Chest Pain, Dallas Therapist, Dallas TX, Depersonalization, Depression, DID / MPD, DID Survivors, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dissociative Survivor, emotional pain, Family Conflict, Father Introjects, Father Issues, Fear, Headaches, Healing, Healing Process, Internal Conflict, Irritability, Kathy Broady, Loyalty, Male Therapist, night church, Nightmares, Obsessions, Panic Attacks, Paternal Abuse, Perpetrators, PTSD, RA, Ritual Abuse, Season changes, Self Destruction, Self Injury, sexual abuse, Sexual Perpetrators, Sexually Abused Child, Sexually Abused Children, SI, Summer Solstice, Switching, Therapy Process, Therapy Process for DID, Trauma, Trauma Bonds, Trauma memories, Trauma survviors, trauma therapist, Treatment Goals for DID, Trembling, Triggers at 2:19 pm by Kathy Broady
This weekend is often a difficult weekend for trauma survivors with dissociative identity disorder. First, there is Father’s Day (for those of us living in the USA), and secondly, it’s the Summer Solstice. Anytime the difficult days get stacked on top of each other, it’s going to make for a complicated time.
On days when the issues seem to surface in layers, what do you do to cope?
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(**This blog article is about difficult topics so it could be triggering – please pace yourself carefully and keep yourself safe.)
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Father’s Day has many of the same emotional complications as was written about on Mother’s Day. The days proceeding are often full of painful memories, heartbreaking loss, fear, conflict, and upset. The vast majority of DID survivors have had abusive fathers, so the idea of celebrating fathers typically stirs up great turmoil.
The first day of summer, like all season changes, has relevance to those who have experienced difference forms of Ritual Abuse (RA). Many of the dark church organizations celebrate the seasonal changes and these so-called “celebrations” are full of trauma, abuse, gross activities, icky messes, scary events, etc. Survivors of these ordeals are often flooded with flashbacks, emotional distress and internal conflict during the times of season changes.
When you put the two of these highly emotional events together, dissociative survivors experience a lot of overwhelm. Some of the difficulties can include PTSD symptoms (nightmares, flashbacks, depersonalization, body memories, difficulties sleeping, irritability, feeling distant from others, etc.) and anxiety symptoms (panic attacks, excessive fears, heightened startle reflex, nausea, trembling, heart palpitations, headaches, obsessions, chest pain, etc), self-destructive thoughts, self-injury behaviors, suicidal ideation (pervasive thoughts about wanting to die), depression, tearfulness, or detached numbing. It’s probably been a miserable weekend for a lot of DID survivors.
Fathers that participate in dark church rituals are often not the kind of fathers that you find written about in Hallmark Cards. These are the kinds of fathers that prefer abusive activities, or that like sadistic pain, or have freaky and perverse sexual interests. They are difficult men who have caused a lot of hurt and pain for a lot of people, especially for their children.
And yet, even so, there are nearly always those parts within the DID system that feel loyalty and a deep bonding with the father figure. These parts are typically parts that have adopted some level of acceptance of the traumatic activities, and have long ago learned to tolerate the abuse or to even define it as anything but abuse.
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Father Introjects
DID survivors often manage abuse by their fathers by creating a father introject within the internal dissociative system. Father introjects are internal system parts that remember the father so well that they look-feel-sound-act-appear to the others inside as the same as the actual father. An internal introject may do the same kinds of abusive behaviors to the other parts of the system, recreating the same abusive patterns and feelings that the external father did. Since the internal world is so real to DID survivors, it can feel like the father is still there, still controlling things, still making all the decisions, still threatening harm, still causing harm.
And in many ways this can be true.
It can be difficult to separate who the external father is from the internal father introject. They can very much feel like mirror-images of each other, shadow replicas, and the child parts of the system will not be able to tell the difference between them.
But father introjects are NOT the actual father, no matter how much they may claim to be so. Father introjects actually belong to you. They split from you, they came from your mind, and they originated with you. They are actually part of you, and not part of the father. They may have been taught by the father, but they are actually yours.
However, they will be powerful parts of the internal system though so their power and influence is not to be ignored or minimized. It is more important to work with these parts, and reconnect their loyalty to the survivor person instead of to the father figure. This is an absolutely crucial part of the DID therapy process, and if you haven’t yet gained a safe working relationship with your father introject, you will need to do so.
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Father Transference Issues
In the therapy process, male therapists will have many of the same kinds of transference issues regarding father issuesj as female therapists have with mother issues. In fact, it is often difficult for some female dissociative survivors to work with male therapists because of the kinds of trauma, abuse, and controls associated with their father. Male therapists often have to address transference issues of being seen as the abuser, controlling male, dominant owner, sexual pervert, etc. So many trauma survivors have issues with men — and even more have issues with their fathers — that it makes being a male therapist for female trauma survivors particularly difficult.
Other female trauma survivors are so used to be led by men or connected to men, especially their father, that they feel more at ease with men and less comfortable with “neglectful, abandoning mothers”. (Female therapists tend to get more of the abandonment transference issues, while male therapists tend to get more of the abuser-male dominance transference issues.) The relationship between survivors and their parents will very often dictate which gender of therapist is a better fit for them.
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Typical Father Issues
Father issues are not easy to work through. They often take years of time to sort out, and they are very painful. Many survivors truly feel bonded to their fathers, even if some of their relationship involved sexual activities. Sometimes feeling sexually connected to the father felt better than being emotionally abandoned by the mother. When this is the case, there are numerous emotional complications to process during your healing.
Do you understand the role your father has played in your life?
Do you experience system switching, feelings of fear, or flashbacks when you are in the same room with your father?
What would your father do if you said no to him?
What would your father do if you chose a lifestyle very different from the one he chose for his life?
Are you allowed to live separately from him? Have you been allowed to move away from his neighborhood?
How much control or influence does your father have over you life in the current day?
Are you safe when you are in the same room as your father?
Does your father still abuse you or any of your younger parts? Does he still exert a level of sexual dominance over anyone in your system?
Would you be betraying your father if you refused to let him touch you in sexual ways?
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Remember This
If your father is an abuser, you can get distance and separation from him.
You don’t have to stay bonded to abusers.
You don’t have to stay connected to violent relationships.
You don’t have to be abused to be accepted.
You do not have to be sexual to be accepted.
All men are not abusers.
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By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
www.AbuseConsultants.com
www.SurvivorForum.com
Copyright © 2008-2010 Kathy Broady LCSW and Discussing Dissociation
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