February 23, 2013
Feeling Split about Anger
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What do you think when you see this picture? How does it relate to you?
I like this picture. I don’t agree with the wording, in its entirety, but I can see value in the message.
First, let’s talk about the picture itself.
How does this picture represent the inner worlds, and internal systems of someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder?
Do you see the different people? The different ages? The different body positions? The connections and separations between the various people?
This picture reminds me of the way dissociative systems are often split and separated, especially where anger is concerned.
I see the upper outer layers — the ones that have the front jobs of presenting to society. They seem to be the “real ones” and the parts that interact more frequently with the outside world. However, this picture shows the rest of the story. It shows the lower, more hidden layers that are often less known, but typically still very powerful in terms of system functioning and decision-making.
Or, it could represent a completely different kind of dissociative splitting process. It could be those who dissociated away and floated above the trouble and pain, with a layer of everyday existence horizoned in the middle, with a separate group of insiders stuck down underneath, often unable to surface in the current time frame.
The presence of an opposite, mirror-like reflection of an internal system people is common in DID / MPD. For every insider of one extreme, there is often someone else inside that holds a position that is the polar opposite. This is an important and necessary strategy for managing both ends of extreme situations.
What do you see in this picture?
Can you relate in any way?
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And what do you believe about anger?
Anger is such a difficult emotion. It is all too often connected with the horrors of abuse, pain, trauma, fear, and conflict. It’s difficult to be angry, and well-behaved at the same time. Anger often brings out the worst in people.
And yet anger is an important emotion.
Anger knows when you, or others, have been wronged. It knows when something isn’t right. It knows when something should be different.
I don’t know that anger and happiness are opposites as suggested in this picture. I don’t think that the removal of anger means that emotional spot will be replaced by happiness.
Sometimes being angry is important. The appropriate expression of anger can be very healthy. For dissociative systems, it is important to listen to those inside that carry the anger. These insiders have a great deal of information about your history. It might not be easy to hear what they have to say, but their years of experience really should not be denied or forgotten. What they survived counts as much as any other trauma.
Sometimes the internal angry ones copy the external “real life” abusers, making the other insiders repeatedly re-experience trauma and excessive inappropriate discipline, enforcing old rules without understanding that many of these old family rules are not healthy and no longer as necessary or important as they once were. Angry insiders often contain and re-live their memories by inflicting these same dynamics actions over and over and over. Instead of telling their memories, they show them.
When these angry insiders finally feel safe enough to talk honestly about their painful experiences, their anger can become less self-destructive. This change doesn’t come easily, but building relationships and trust with these angry parts is crucial to your overall healing. This is one of the most difficult and challenging components of the healing process. It’s messy. It’s painful. The path is not pretty or lined with flowers. It’s full of bruises and injuries and obscenities. It’s a frustrating process filled with inappropriate, ugly exchanges and intense emotion. And yet, if you don’t reach out to your angry ones, who will?
Since the angry ones are a very real part of your system, if they don’t get included in the healing process, what happens for them? Why should they be left out, and left behind? They need respect and acceptance. Their strengths need to be understood and appreciated.
Their anger may not be replaced by happiness, but they may develop a deeper sense of peace, and contentment, and personal strength. This strength and internal confidence will radiate through all of your system. There is a certain beauty found in their strength.
What are your angry insiders angry about?
What are their actions showing you about their history?
Are you willing to help everyone inside, even the angry ones?
If not, what are you afraid of?
Will it cost you more to ignore them than to work with them?
It’s definitely not easy. Important, but not easy.
I wish you all the best in your healing journey.
Warmly,
Kathy
February 10, 2010
10 DID Therapy 101 Tips
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Lots of trauma survivors with dissociative identity disorder are just starting their healing process. Other dissociative survivors are not new to their healing process, but they might realize that they haven’t yet covered all the basics.
DID therapy can feel huge, daunting, difficult, and overwhelming. There is so much to do and so many areas of work. For a broader overview of the many areas of DID healing, please refer to the article, “50 Treatment Issues for Dissociative Identity Disorder”.
For individuals building the foundation for their work with your dissociative system, here are some of the first things to do.
DID 101 involves:
1. Get to know your system. Build the courage to find and meet your insiders. Remember, they were formed and created to help you – even if it doesn’t feel like it, you are (or can be) on the same team. Who are your inside parts? What jobs do they have? What kinds of things are they able to do? It’s really ok for you to build positive relationships and actual friendships with your insiders. If this feels scary for you, explore those feelings. What makes it hard for you to get to know your insiders? What fears or resentments do you have? Understanding your resistance to these ideas is important.
2. Become more comfortable with your diagnosis. If you don’t understand what dissociative identity disorder (DID /MPD) is, be sure to speak more with your therapist or psychiatrist about what it means to be dissociative. There are lots of books, websites, blogs, articles, conferences, etc that can help to educate you about the basics about DID. Understanding DID will help take out some of the mystery and confusion for you.
3. Build a support system and capable treatment team. It is very helpful if you can surround yourself with a few other people that understand trauma dynamics, preferably at least one or two other people, besides your therapist and doctor that understand that you are working on healing from trauma. These support people don’t have to be experts in DID – if they are just willing to spend some time with you when you need a safe distraction from your healing work, that will be helpful. Please don’t lean on lay-support people for the heavy issues. Leave the complicated treatment issues for your therapist to work with – your support friends are not therapists, so be very careful about not pushing them too far or demanding too much of them.
4. Once you have recognized at least one or two other parts, work on building communication with these parts. Internal communication is one of the very most important factors in DID therapy, and the sooner you can interact cooperatively with your other parts, the better your healing progress will happen. Approximately twenty of the articles in the Discussing Dissociation blog reference tips for building internal communication. This link groups these articles together. Learning how to talk to your other parts is the most important factor in your healing.
5. Connecting with your internal landscape. What can you see inside? Can you see the other insiders? Do you have an internal safe place? Internal visualization work is an important skill as it builds a way to connect with your insiders. Even if you can’t see the others inside, there will likely be someone else who can. Maybe ask if that insider will draw a map of your system for you? The sooner you can see inside, the better. And of course, if you see insiders that are not in positive, healthy, clean living conditions, you and other helpers in your system will need to do something to help them.
6. Working on limiting or preventing self-destructive impulses and self-injurious behaviors. Learning how to address self-harm urges is particularly important for your stabilization and progression in therapy. You have already been hurt enough – adding more hurt may feel like it helps you to cope in the short-term, but using behaviors such as cutting or burning is not any more helpful than using a shot of whiskey or a hit of cocaine. Explore better ways to cope with your intense feelings, develop more grounding skills, build positive containment strategies, and methods to reconnect with the here-and-now. A grouping of articles about preventing self-injury can be found here.
7. Live in a safe place both inside and out. If you live in a violent environment, address this issue as quickly as you are able. If you are continuing to be abused or sexually assaulted in any way, your dissociative walls will stay strong, and your system will have greater trouble trusting you and your treatment team. Of course, when anyone is fearful of abusive repercussions, it is much harder to disclose the real issues. Dangerous environments can include everything from domestic violence, abusive parents, organized perpetrators, to internal system perpetrators and angry introjects. Building more and more current-day safety is vitally important for your overall healing process. If you aren’t safe, make this a priority in your therapy process. Building an internal safe place is also critically important. However, please remember that in order to build an internal safe place, you have to have a genuine belief that safety can happen, at least part of the time. Making an internal safe place for your insiders is much more difficult when you are still concerned about external safety.
8. Start building options for positive self-comfort, self-soothing activities. The therapy process can be so very painful and emotionally difficult. Having a variety of options to do that are comfortable, safe, gentle, soothing, and stabilizing is important. What can you do when you want to have a break from the hard work of therapy? What can you do when you need some quiet space to think – or to not think? When you are hurting, what can you do that will help you to feel better? Soothing your pain in ways that help your healing (vs. using self-destructive options) is an important skill to develop.
9. Create healthy options for expression of feeling and emotion – use art, music, journaling, collage, blogging, forum posting, sculpting, painting, poetry, play therapy, sand tray therapy, scrapbooking, etc. DID therapy involves processing a lot of flashbacks, violent images, intense feelings, overwhelming thoughts, body memories, body pain, etc. Building a repertoire of artistic avenues to describe your feelings and experiences will be very helpful. You might not always have words that you can use so it is important to find non-verbal ways to safely express what you feel.
10. Create your own personal space. In this space, let it be ok for your insiders to come out, to be themselves, to be out in the body, and to exist. Out in the world, and when you are around other people, most of your daily life will be about keeping your insiders tucked in and acting socially inappropriate. But somewhere in your private time, your insiders will need time to surface, to know that it is ok for them to come out. Having the freedom to switch without reprimand is important as each of your insiders will need to do some personalized healing work of their own.
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Not 11. Please note: I am specifically not including memory work or skills to do memory work in my top then list of DID 101 skills. The reason for this is that if you are just beginning DID therapy, it can be very destabilizing to focus on heavy-duty memory work. Yes, of course, doing trauma work is an important part of your overall healing process, but in the beginning of this journey, you need to build these basic skills before you begin to put a lot of energy into memory work. It is much safer and more stabilizing to have these foundational therapy skills in place before focusing on the trauma content of DID therapy.
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DID therapy is intense, long-term, exhausting, and difficult. But your healing is worth it. As you truly address the painful conflicts, unmet needs, and internal confusion caused by your years of trauma, abuse, and neglect, you will feel better within your own self.
I wish you the very best in your healing journey –
Warmly,
Kathy
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By:
Kathy Broady LCSW
