Healing your Inner Child / Inner Pain

Help for Alters (Insiders) and Sufferers of Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.) or Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)

If you suffered trauma as a child, the traumatized part of you could have separated from the rest of you and need special attention. Understanding this can be crucial for healing. Is anyone too macho or mature to have ever been a child? No matter how much you might hate it, you are human. We all long to push a distressing experience out of our mind and just get on with life without mentally coming to terms with it, but this is not nearly as heroic nor as helpful as we would like to think. Denying the reality of an inner wound does not prevent a suppressed part of us from acutely suffering, nor does it stop the pain from spilling over to the rest of our lives in ways that can make the cause frustratingly hard to identify. Unlike the power of resolving inner pain, the burden of trying to suppress pain is a dead weight keeping too many of us from the joyous freedom that would otherwise be ours.

I challenge you to embrace reality, embarking on a terrifyingly exciting adventure of self-discovery that could lead to more peace and fulfillment than you have ever dared believe possible. You can end inner pain.

Nevertheless, desperate times call for desperate measures. If, for example, an emergency were sufficiently serious, you might be brave enough to sacrifice a limb, cutting it off to save the rest of you.

Pain avoidance is not nearly as simple, however, as trying to cut unpleasant memories out of our lives. Consider someone with a seriously wounded leg. Pain in the injured leg might push him to opt for amputation but after surgery he could be devastated to find himself hounded by phantom limb pain in which he suffers pain as if the amputated limb were still there and as wounded as ever. Likewise, cutting ourselves off from painful memories is more drastic than we realize and rarely as effective in ending our distress as we suppose.

Such are the mysteries of inner (emotional) pain that to deepen our insight it will help to continue to look briefly at something slightly easier to understand: physical pain. If a gang of thugs kept beating you, it would hurt, of course, but by releasing such chemicals as adrenalin, your brain would temporarily shut down some of your consciousness of pain, thus helping you to flee from your attackers. Running when seriously injured brings great risk of inflaming the injuries perhaps raising the risk to life-threatening levels but the temporary necessity of escape overrides other vital concerns. So during the emergency, your minds partial suppression of your awareness of pain is a precious gift of God. Despite your understandable longing never to feel pain, however, once you are safe, continuing to have little consciousness of pain could be counter-productive. Without pain signaling the extent of your injuries and hence alerting you to the urgency of seeking medical treatment your wellbeing could be seriously impaired.

This natural response to physical trauma parallels our natural response to severe inner pain. In the short term, the suppression of your inner pain can be a blessing by helping you cope with the necessities of life. For as long as this suppression continues, however, it will keep you from healing.

Being human means we have an inbuilt need not merely to store facts but to process events both mentally and emotionally. That does not necessarily mean crying, but accessing the full range of human emotions and analyzing the experience until we fully come to terms with it, before finally offloading the pain in an emotionally healthy way. When we suffer something highly unpleasant we long to disconnect from the entire event and live as if it had never happened. But the memory and the need to respond to it in a fully human manner remains a part of us.

So to emotionally disconnect from the event is to disconnect from an essential part of who we are a part of us that continues to exist and feel and attempts to grapple with the experience in an authentically human way no matter how much we wish that part of us would die. We either help that part of our humanity find peace or we keep our lives in needless turmoil.

When people have something so horrible in their past that their mind recoils from the very thought of it, we can understand the mind trying to suppress all memory of the event. A simple blocking of the past would not work, however, if a person is continually reminded of it by, for example, having to endure similar trauma every few days. If the trauma is on-going, though less than twenty-four hours every day of every

week, the mind has to employ a more sophisticated approach to maintaining sanity by giving itself a big a reprieve as possible whenever the trauma is not occurring. The mind has to divide itself so that part of it has the capacity to function whenever the person is being re-traumatized and another part is kept from awareness of what is happening so that it is able to function at times that are less traumatic without being hampered by conscious awareness of the horrors that occurred yesterday and the paralyzing fear that they might recur tomorrow.

Additional types of trauma or trauma multiplying beyond the capacity of one part of the mind to cope can cause further fragmenting of the mind. That way, no part has to cope with every horrific memory and the consciousness that more such horrors are likely. The mind-crippling task of trying to deal with everything at once is broken down into smaller, though still horrific, pieces.

It is not only memories that are compartmentalized because the person has to be able to function often at quite a sophisticated level while being traumatized. So intellectual abilities have to be divided up as well. Some abilities can be replicated in another part of the brain, just like a right-handed people can develop the side of their brain that controls their left hand so that they can get better at writing with their left hand. Not all abilities are replicated, however, with the result these people are usually more skilled than they realize until they learn about all their other parts.

Far from being a freak, these people have, from an early age, stumbled upon an ingenious mental strategy for coping with situations that are almost beyond human endurance.

As a childs brain grows it becomes increasingly rigid and the ability to compartmentalize itself this way is lost if the process is not initiated by around about seven years of age. If someone learns the technique when young, however, the person can continue further compartmentalizing his/her brain later in life.

So traumatized children especially those who are artistically and/or intellectually gifted have a remarkable ability. They can suppress inner pain by splitting into a functioning part of them that is fully aware of their suffering, and a part of them that is much less aware. It has been theorized that the split might come about through them trying to cope by intensely imagining that the horrific experience is happening to

someone else, but even babies can split. Because each part of the person grapples alone with a different set of events, each part has a unique awareness of certain emotional pain, and hence a distinct consciousness.

Many people call these disconnected parts of a person alters. Sometimes they are referred to as insiders. Some people simply use the term parts. I very much like this last term, even though I dont use it much in my pages because the word is so common that it would not help search engine users find the webpage. Alter sounds too alien and even insider sounds a little spooky. Part helps reinforce that each alter is a part of the one person. Each time a new alter is discovered, it is finding a vital part of oneself that you were not even aware was missing.

Alters act like persons within a person. They are part of the full person (although they might not realize it) and they make their own decisions and have feelings, intelligence, and an individual personality.

Writes one of Alices alters to one of Jakes alters (two of my friends who have let me share this with you names changed to protect anonymity):

I want you to know that I respect and admire you for your courage to split off and keep this secret from Jake so that he could survive. What a sacrifice you have made. It is like agreeing to live with a knife in your heart for the sake of the others.

The benefit of splitting is that the part of the person not conscious of the worst aspects of the trauma is better able to soldier on with lifes daily demands. As we have seen also applies to a wounded person fleeing an attacker, a lowered consciousness of the severity of the trauma can, in the short term, prove a clever coping mechanism, but there is a serious downside.

A part of you could have been so desperate to protect the rest of you by keeping unpleasant feelings and information from you that it severs lines of communication with you. The unintended consequence, however, is that the restricted flow of information operates in both directions. The price of making painful information

inaccessible to you is that vital information you discover later in life cannot get back to the hurting part of you.

That part of you left to cope alone with the full force of the trauma not only continues to reel in pain, it never gets to move on or grow up. The isolated, hurting part of you remains trapped at approximately the same mental age and limited knowledge, year after year. Usually it cannot benefit from new insights you gain later in life insights that would otherwise have enabled the hurting part of you to heal. For example, the inner child in a sex abuse survivor remains unable to see through the abusers former lies that the adult part of the person can see through. So the damaging power of those haunting lies continues, and the person fails to heal. Similarly, the suppressed, hurting part cannot access the spiritual understanding that the person gained later in life. Thankfully, the disconnected part can be taught these liberating, healing truths but usually this can happen only if that part of the person is acknowledged and dialog takes place in which these truths are taught as one would teach anyone else of similar age and experiences. Unless this happens, the deeply hurting, unhealed part will remain with the person for life, and make its presence felt in mysteriously vague, unpleasant ways. Sadly, fear of the unknown and false shame make it exceedingly difficult for most people to face the possibility that they have alters. In actual fact, if I discovered I had multiple personalities, Id be excited about it, but I have the advantage of understanding all the benefits flowing from such a diagnosis. No matter how much you suppress alters and live in denial, if you have alters, they are an inseparable part of you. Keeping them suppressed would sentence you to remaining only a shadow of the wonderful person you could be. Yes, when alters first surface they have pain and problems, but the key is not to try to rid yourself of these essential parts of you but to help them heal and this is fairly easy. Anyone trying to suppress alters is like someone with injured fingers and toes who, instead of tending the wounds, wants to hack off all his arms and legs! Each alter has unique gifts or abilities, such as creativity or a special skill or valuable character trait or a key to healing that will empower you to soar beyond what you could otherwise achieve.

If You Dont Have Alters

You dont need multiple personalities to have a wounded inner child. A woman, who as far I know does not have alters, has given me permission to share the following: Just over a year ago I purchased a Christian CD of baby lullabies and sent it to my new grandson. I kept thinking about that CD. The next time I was in town I purchased one for myself. I would have never thought of it on my own. Ive never known anyone to suggest such a thing. It was a revelation from the Holy Spirit. For weeks that turned into months I had this music playing softly while I read my Bible and prayed. I was absolutely amazed at the nurturing and healing that came to me from such music in the background. It was an inexpensive investment that paid big dividends for me. You just might want to give some thought to purchasing a childrens Christian CD to see if it doesnt help heal the inner child in you that was neglected (or at least not supported very well) in childhood. Sometimes we need to become that little child again before we can move on.

How Can You Know if You Have an Alter?

Should you have alters, becoming aware of this fact is unlikely to be easy. After all, they formed to keep things from you. Moreover, needless fears and misconceptions about the implications of having alters cause most peoples minds to recoil from the thought of having alters. The result is high psychological pressure for people with alters to remain unaware of their alters. So despite all the healing advantages of finding that you have alters, things are stacked against you discovering them. Winning the trust of a terrified jackrabbit might be less of a challenge, but the only sure way to discover an alters is to so win their confidence that they decide to talk to you regularly. Until alters feels safe to do this, you can only look for vague clues. Should you have alters, do not expect

to have any awareness of, at best, more than a few of the symptoms mentioned below. Although some people with alters have obvious gaps in their memory of the distant past, there are some who, even before healing begins, have a more detailed and complete memory of their childhood than average people who have never had alters. This is because alters do not necessarily retain sole memory of certain events. What they keep to themselves (until they begin to heal) is the deepest emotional reaction to certain traumatic events. Rather than mere facts, it is particularly emotional ownership of these events that they keep from the rest of the person. So people with undetected alters might not necessarily have missing years. They might, however, have the occasional missing moment in everyday life that cannot be attributed to alcohol or drugs. They might, for instance, lose keys or other personal items and find them in places where they cannot recall putting them. Other possibilities include goods appearing that they cannot recall purchasing, inexplicable bank account withdrawals, finding themselves somewhere with no recollection of how they got there, or having no memory of doing things in the recent past that other people claim to have witnessed them doing. Sometimes people with alters discover that they can protect themselves from self-harm or other unwanted behavior by hiding from themselves knives, credit cards or whatever. They know where they placed the objects, and yet putting them in an unusual place works when an alter does not observe the hiding. If you have sole access to your computer, check History on your Internet Browser to see if you have visited websites you cannot recall having seen. If you retain electronic copies of sent emails, check them to see if you recognize them all. An itemized phone bill, credit card account, or anything else tracking your actions might also be revealing. Of course, we all have memory lapses but with alters, lapses are usually more pronounced than for most people. Some people have even feared Alzheimers, when their lapses were simply due to a suppressed part of the person taking over for a while and doing and thinking things that it keeps hidden from the rest of the person. It is tragically common for people with alters to be called liars when their denials are simply because they genuinely don't remember certain things. Until healing progresses, alters are particularly active when the rest of the person is asleep. You could wake up to find things moved. It might just be sleepwalking but it could be more.

I provide e-mail support for abuse survivors. With several different survivors I have suddenly received an e-mail that seems out of character for that person. Besides the subject matter seeming unusual, the grammar and spelling is often more childlike than their usual standard. Sometimes I initially thought that maybe the person wrote the e-mail while under the influence of drugs or alcohol but often it turns out that it is the child part of them temporarily taking over. When I send a copy of the e-mail to the person, he or she is often shocked, having no recollection of having ever written it. Had the correspondence been handwritten, most likely there would be a noticeable change in handwriting. So another clue to the presence of alters is changes in handwriting in, for example, ones journal. In fact, keeping a journal is a good idea, especially doing so at different times of the day (different times and situations are more likely to reveal different alters). You might be surprised what you find later when re-reading your journal. Some adult survivors sometimes find themselves acting in a childlike way. They might, for example, have a collection of childrens toys. Again, to some extent, we all have times when we act a little childlike, but when it is more pronounced, it could be the inner child temporarily making its presence felt. Another possible indicator of an alter is sometimes having certain abilities and sometimes not. You might, for example, have created artwork or poems of a standard far beyond what you think yourself capable of. Or you might be mystified as to why you are occasionally unable to do something perhaps to spell or read music or some other skill that at other times you can easily do. Since she was seven, a friend of mine was hopeless at mathematics and yet she kept getting high marks in the subject. She could ace a test, go home and find herself quite unable to solve simple math problems. At college she elected to complete the same algebra course with the same teacher not once, not twice but three times because, despite continually getting high grades, she didnt have a clue about the subject. Determined not to let it beat her, she even tried to do the course a fourth time, but her teacher forbade her on the grounds that she was too good at the subject to keep repeating it. It was not until she was in her late thirties that she discovered an alter of hers, formed at age seven, who not only specialized in mathematics but who, out of fear of being pushed aside by other parts of the person, deliberately kept the rest of the person mathematically ignorant.

Another possible clue is having extended times in which one feels unreal, as if in a dream or not really there. Some describe it as like observing everything from behind a glass wall. It is known as coconsciousness. Another possibility, is sometimes thinking of oneself as we or us, or feeling as if there is another person inside of you. Hearing voices that seem to come from inside you is yet another possibility. What these voices say could seem a little strange as might be expected from someone who has suffered bizarre and terrifying abuse but, in contrast to people with certain other conditions, the voices are relatively rational and sane. Another clue is occasionally having two conflicting emotions; perhaps, for example, feeling happy and yet deep inside feeling sad and trapped. All of the above are common symptoms of what therapists call Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.). Not everyone has every symptom and any supposed symptoms should only be regarded as clues, not diagnostic proof. For example, an embarrassed woman confided to a friend of mine that she kept losing her keys. What is emotionally upsetting you? asked my discerning friend. The problem turned out not to be D.I.D., nor Alzheimers, but simply a reaction to stress. There are questionnaire-type psychological tests designed to diagnose D.I.D. They can only be administered by professionals and are expensive. See Psychological Tests to Diagnose Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Not as Weird as You Think

An older term for Dissociative Identity Disorder is Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). Regardless of name, its existence has been recognized by researchers at least as early as the 1800s. In a sense, we all have multiple personalities and switch between them according to our circumstances. We would act differently, for instance, in each of the following circumstances: * In the presence of a head of state * When alone with our spouse

* On a night out with the girls/guys * When playing with children * When depressed In other ways, too, everyone has multiple personalities. For example, we might say, My heart says one thing, but my head says another. The ability to see things from such different perspectives can be a significant asset. When indecisive, we speak of being in two minds. When dieting we are not sure which part of us will win the part wanting to be thin or part wanting to keep eating. In Romans 7, Paul devoted almost an entire chapter detailing the battle within myself between the part of him wanting to obey God and the part wanting to indulge himself. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do (Romans 7:15). So having multiple personalities is not nearly as abnormal as it first seems. Moreover, dissociation is normal. In order to focus on the task at hand, all of us sometimes temporarily put unpleasant memories out of our minds, or tune out to such distractions as background noises. It is just that for some people this natural tendency is done to a greater extent. For them, shutting off awareness of certain distressing things is done so effectively that a separate consciousness forms within the person, with part of the person knowing, feeling and thinking some things that the other part does not. Therapists sometimes call each distinct identity an alternate personality or, to use a term already introduced, alter for short. As mentioned, the term insider is also sometimes used, and some feel more comfortable with the term part. The personality that controls the person most often is usually referred to as the host. The distinction between host and other parts is seldom set in concrete. A part that has been host for years might suddenly feel overwhelmed or experience new trauma that causes it to go into deep hiding. Another alter is then forced to take over, or a new one is formed for the purpose. The new host might later on split and form new alters who see themselves as having split off from the new host, and feel more connected to the new host than to the former host. Over a lifetime, someone might end up having had several hosts. Sometimes more than one alter might simultaneously share the role of host. Since the host is the part most seen in public, other alters often sacrifice themselves to protect the host from distressing feelings and/or memories, thus enabling the host the public face of the system of alters to better maintain the appearance of normality. They also do this to free the host from oppressive distractions that would hinder the hosts

ability to perform important functions such as succeeding in school or employment. A part might become host due to having the best selection of natural abilities for the role but, if for no reason other than having the most relevant experience, the host usually ends up with the best social skills and other abilities, such as work skills, needed for everyday living. So a change of host is not only usually precipitated by a trauma, it is itself traumatic because the host takes into hiding with him or her vital information needed for everyday living. The new host is left to flounder, having to try to pick up knowledge on the fly. The host might have had the most opportunities to develop, but every part of a person is important. While they remain separated, each part has exclusive access to part of the persons intellectual capacity. To be whole, a person needs every part. Moreover, given half a chance, other parts can develop astonishingly and in ways that the host could never achieve. People (hosts) who are just becoming aware that have D.I.D. are often tempted to feel superior to their alters and regard them as little more than nuisances. A friend of mine, who is himself a host, beautifully corrects this mistaken notion: In my system, Im the host. By that I mean Im the one my alters laid their lives on the line to protect. Im the one for whom my alters gave up so much in order to keep safe. Im the one they held above the water, while they drowned, as it were. They gave up living in this life and held on to agonizingly painful experiences and situations so that I could survive and move on, while for years they were locked away in the dark haunted by those experiences without contact with the outside world. I owe them everything, and each time I communicate with any of them I do my best to treat them with the same respect that I would treat someone who lost their legs diving under a truck to save the life of one of my children. Yes, they can be very angry. Yes, they can be annoying, controlling, distracting, painful to live with, but so might someone dealing with the consequences of having lost their legs saving my child. Regardless of that anger, I would happily immerse myself in it to give them one ounce of relief, especially after what they went through for me. Its the least I could do. The exciting thing is that Ive found that as I treat them with respect and let them know that their needs are important to me by

working with them on getting those needs met and allowing them time to just be themselves in a safe environment where they arent judged, they heal. They start to realize that those situations they held deep inside themselves have now past, and that they are now safe. As they are cared for, they start to use their skills to contribute meaningfully to our family the whole person of whom I am a part. For example, I have an alter called Do, who is very fast at getting things done. He now helps when we have limited time to get things done really quickly. This morning he came out to help me get my kids ready for swimming lessons. He managed to get them completely dressed, bags packed, everything in under eight minutes. Normally that would take me around an hour. As mentioned, if you suspect you have an alters, conversing directly with them is the only sure way to confirm their existence, but that can be as challenging as trying to entice undercover agents to admit they have been spying on you and freely tell you everything. Moreover, getting to this point with an alter is a life-changing step not to be taken lightly. Once one alter begins spilling the beans and finding acceptance, others are likely to become emboldened to likewise make themselves known, and your life will probably never be the same again. Even if as I expect will happen by the journeys end it proves highly beneficial, there will almost certainly be times when you regret ever starting this journey to peace and wholeness. I warn you not to start this process without being sure you are led of God in every step of the way, including your choice of counselor. On the other hand, doing nothing (and so keeping alters feeling rejected and in more or less enforced solitary confinement) is also strewn with dangers. In fact, doing nothing could be the worst mistake of your life. Alters typically carry so much pain that ignoring them might be all it takes to make them suicidal. I wish I didnt have to give this chilling warning, but to end up with a suicidal alter could be more than just unpleasant for you, it is at least theoretically possible for that alter to succeed in killing you despite you wanting to live. The most knowledgeable people say you should never act solely on the basis of written information about Dissociative Identity Disorder but should seek an appropriately qualified and experienced professional, and that even such experts, like other health professions, need liability insurance. Certainly, this webpage is no do-it-yourself manual and despite my considerable experience helping people with alters I should not call myself an expert. On the other hand, I know of only one infallible expert the Lord Jesus Christ and I plead with you to

earnestly seek his guidance before doing anything, and likewise before deciding for the exceedingly risky option of doing nothing. It is not uncommon for abuse survivors to go through life unaware that there are suppressed parts of them (alters) until one of the alters finally makes his/her presence felt when the person is beginning to heal. Alters have two pressing, but conflicting, needs. One is to burst out of the agony of solitary confinement by communicating with someone. The other need is to avoid further rejection and ridicule by remaining in isolated silence. When their host begins to seem more accepting of them or they find someone such as a trustworthy, understanding counselor or friend who they think might accept them, the balance between these conflicting needs could tip in favor of the alters believing it seems safe enough to risk revealing themselves. So they might suddenly start communicating for the first time. If they think they can trust someone more than their host, they might briefly switch off their hosts awareness so that the host knows nothing of the conversation. So despite alters longing to end their isolation, it is rare for them to reveal themselves if they think they are likely to be rejected or thought lowly of. If you have alters, they will probably be able to hear your thoughts and words on some occasions but not on others. So an alter could perhaps be enticed to converse with you if you were, on several different occasions, to say to yourself something along these lines: If anyone can hear me, I want to apologize for any way I have offended you. I didnt want to believe you were real but I now understand that I was wrong. I want to love and accept you and would value you sharing with me. Please speak to me. Dont try this right now, however. There are dangers to avoid that are explained in the rest of this webpage and the two webpages it leads to. It usually helps if you speak out loud (or at least in an audible whisper) to your alters. If you suspect you might know the alters name or something about the alter, use this information as you speak. This, too, might increase the chance of a reply.

Understanding Alters
Even though having alters is a common, well-documented reaction to childhood trauma, it is usual for people, upon first discovering that they

have alters, to find it deeply disturbing and seek repeated assurance that they are not going insane. In reality, for any of us who have alters, the discovery is a very healthy sign and a significant step towards far more peace, joy and fulfillment than we have ever known. As explained in a link at the end of this series of pages, I believe that Dissociative Identity Disorder develops the brain beyond what it otherwise would have, such that when a person begins to heal from the disorder, having had multiple personalities actually turns out to be an intellectual advantage. Of course, until healing commences, having Dissociative Identity Disorder is primarily a disadvantage because and each alter (and the host) has access to only a portion of the persons brain. Feelings of confusion as well as strange symptoms are normal for people recovering from D.I.D. From time to time, a friend of mine would ask the Lord what was wrong with him. Each time God would simply but very tenderly reply: You have alters. Im healing you. It is most unfortunate that in old, ill-informed circles, schizophrenia was mislabeled split personality. This grossly inappropriate name might cause someone unfamiliar with psychology to wrongly imagine there could be a link between schizophrenia and what used to be called Multiple Personality Disorder. There is not even a superficial similarity. Unlike schizophrenia, Dissociative Identity Disorder does not cause bouts of insanity, nor is it helped by medication (although someone with D.I.D. might have additional conditions like depression that might be helped by medication). The differences go on and on. The term bi-polar is even less likely to be confused with Multiple Personality Disorder but just to be sure, let me assure you that this condition is also very different to what we are discussing. A friend of mine was seeking a prayer partner that he could be transparent with. The man he had in mind was a psychologist who attended his home fellowship. My friend prayed fervently before approaching the man and wisely tested the waters by asking his view of Dissociative Identity Disorder. His response being favorable, my friend confided that he had alters. The psychologists response was, Wow! Thats usually only reserved for the highly intelligent or artistically gifted! In telling me about the incident, my friend said he was obviously an exception to this trend. Thats the response I expected from him and

from you, if you have D.I.D.. People with D.I.D. tend to be so tragically hit by low self esteem that they do not presently realize how gifted they are. Though the significance of his abilities seems not to register with my friend, he is both artistic and of well above average intelligence. In fact, his childhood abuse and putdowns had squashed his artistic leanings, and befriending one of his young alters is releasing his beautiful artistic gift within him. In addition to the huge handicap of battling emotional pain and other unhealed effects of his past, his poor spelling contributed to him feeling intellectually inferior. He is actually so intelligent that in a college course he took there was a firm rule that no one with poor spelling could graduate. Those in charge were embarrassed into breaking their own rule. How could they fail their top student? He was so exceptional that he was tutoring his fellow students. Yet still he thought he was stupid. And if you have D.I.D., youll agree that he was smart but are likely to still be convinced that you are not. Heres an interesting sidenote: This man emailed me frequently for about a year before I discovered that he had alters. I had come to recognize his intelligence and assumed the atrocious spelling in his e-mails was due to dyslexia. A while after I encouraged him to recognize and be kind to his alters (he had previously mistaken them for demons) he began to send near-perfect e-mails. Alters that were good at spelling had surfaced. It is not without reason that D.I.D. has been called sophisticated and one of the most functional responses a child can make to a very traumatic childhood. That is not to suggest, however, that it is desirable for people facing new crises to yield to the temptation to split yet again. Just how counterproductive splitting can be was rammed home to me when a friend of mine was learning a very stressful new job. She needed every bit of previous experience and more. Despite us not wanting it to happen, in an unconscious attempt to cope with the stress, a new alter formed. This poor alter was formed with all of the hosts years of extensive work experience wiped from her memory. Trying to cope under these circumstances greatly magnified the stress. Thankfully, little damage was done because I was able to immediately support the new alter and my friend changed jobs. Very many years before, my friends trauma had caused an alter to form that did not even know how to read or write. Trying to cope proved exceedingly challenging. This alter eventually relearned and developed such courage and skills that she ended up a significant help to her host. It was a very tough journey, however. An alter e-mailed a man with Dissociative Identity Disorder who in despair had called himself a freak:

We are not freaks; we are people forced to carry burdens beyond human endurance. We were smart enough not to go insane but to split. It was the best we could do. That isnt a freak; its someone being denied the help they desperately needed and resorting to extreme measures to save themselves. Would you call a shipwreck survivor who got an infection and had to chop of his own arm to save the rest of him a freak? No, youd say, Wow, that was brave Well, that is what you are: brave. You hid the pain to protect yourself and did what you had to stay alive. That is brave, not freaky. It has been estimated that between one to three percent of the general population in western countries suffer from Dissociative Identity Disorder. I expect it would be far higher in, for example, war-ravished countries.

The Amazing Healing Power of Dealing with Alters

A man would not only sometimes wet his bed, he found himself peculiarly reluctant to clean up afterwards. He preferred to lie in the mess. You might find this bizarre, but it was equally inexplicable to him until he discovered he had alters. After gaining the trust of one of his child alters, the alter confided that he had learnt that a wet bed was the only way to keep a family sex abuser out of his bed. Not only was the man relieved to know for the first time that there was a rational explanation for his disturbing behavior, he now had a strategy for finding a cure. He began prayerfully focusing on finding ways to convince his alter that he was now safe. He could experiment, for example, with assuring the alter than the abuser had left and that never again was he in danger of being molested in bed. A woman decided to conquer her fear of driving by becoming a professional truck driver. After years of driving experience she had abundantly convinced herself that she was a safe and highly capable driver, and yet she still felt uncomfortable about driving. Finally, rather than remaining only vaguely aware that she had alters, she began befriending them. She discovered a child alter who, not surprisingly, had no consciousness of driving expertise gained later in life, and was scared of riding in vehicles. Empowered by this awareness of the alters fears, the woman was able to work towards curing the discomfort the alter felt when driving. She was able to try such things as informing the alter of

her driving expertise (this proved a significant source of relief), and encouraging the alter to enter into faith-filled prayer, trusting in divine protection when traveling on the road. A Christian woman knew the Scriptures affirming that her sins were forgiven but still she was plagued with strong guilt feelings. It turned out that her child alter had a lesser understanding of the gospel than the adult part of her. Once the child alter had the good news of Gods forgiveness more fully explained to her, the relief was remarkable. An abuser said he would chop off a little boys penis. The threa t was so convincing and terrifying that at that very instant an alter formed. Since, as previously explained, alters have access to only a fraction of the information that is known to the person as a whole, it is not surprising that this alter was left unaware that the threat was never carried out. The alter spent decades of needless torment until finally it was specifically explained to the alter that he had not been maimed. From then on the host enjoyed relief and no longer awoke fearing that he had been maimed. A woman often used to walk in her sleep. She got little sleep as it was, without having a disturbed sleep. Sometimes her son would find her wandering the house. Sometimes she would wake in the morning to find things rearranged and most frustrating of all she would have to hunt everywhere for her keys that were not where she had left them. One day as I was chatting with her child alter, the alter mentioned in passing that last night she had slept all night. That immediately got my attention. What do you usually do? I asked. It turned out that the alter only felt safe to play without ridicule when everyone else was asleep. She particularly liked playing with keys and her host had moved her other toys away from the bed, so she had to get up to access them. I try not to wake Mommy (her host), she said. Please dont tell her. I gently persuaded her that her host would not be angry and obtained her permission to let the host know. It turned out that the host had overheard part of the conversation anyhow. The host and alter were able to work out some amicable and effective solutions. An obvious start was to keep the toys by the edge of the bed, so that the alter could play with them in bed. Better still, the host explained to the alter how they would both feel more refreshed if they slept at the same time, and the host began slotting into her waking hours

a time when her alter could play in privacy. She also purchased a pocket doll for her alter to play with when she was at work. Both alter and host benefited from this new level of mutual understanding and cooperation and enjoyed better quality sleep. One woman was tormented by horrific flashbacks of the abuse she had suffered as a child. Then her child alter was taught that because she was a child of the King of kings, she was a princess, and since princesses must be obeyed, she had the God-given authority to command abusers, demons, and so on, to leave. Soon after, the woman was having one of her terrifying flashbacks. Suddenly the child alter rose up and told the abuser in the flashback that he must leave her because she was a princess. In her minds eye the abuser left and the flashback abruptly ended. Similar things happened during nightmares and demonic appearances. Not surprisingly, the woman found peace like she had never before known. A woman used to find clothes shopping and even dressing so distressingly confusing and frustrating that she would often end up in tears over it. When she learnt about her alters, she discovered that the source of the confusion was that each alter had completely different tastes in clothes. Since they had a beautifully close relationship with God, they agreed to let God select their clothes each time they dressed or shopped. It worked. It is not impossible for alters to believe they are the opposite sex to their host. Such alters form because of the need to feel safe, not because of homosexual tendencies. One can well understand abused children supposing that being the opposite sex would lower their chances of further abuse and so wish they were that gender. Both boys and girls have thought this and, in the case of their particular abuser, they are often right. Moreover, if children are sexually abused by a member of the same sex, it can be expected to affect their sexual identity and they might even be labeled by their abuser as being the opposite sex. It is not surprising that some alters suffering this fully take on this false identity and genuinely believe they are the oppose sex. They can have so little body awareness that they believe their actual body is fully the opposite sex to what it really is. Not surprisingly, sexual confusion results, but this can be resolved by helping them realize that there is no need for them to be of their imaginary gender in order to be safe or loved. Only after ensuring they realize that their safety and acceptance is not at stake should the actual gender of their bodies be pointed out to them. This delay is necessary because knowing their real gender is likely to be a significant shock to them, and one that would be most disturbing without the preparation just mentioned. Great care must be taken in dealing with

this sensitive issue. Imagine your reaction if you were to discover that you are not the gender you had always thought you were. With many of his alters thinking themselves to be little children far too young for marital relations and a few of his alters thinking they were the opposite sex, it is no wonder that a man I know often had great difficulty making love to his wife. Identifying alters, helping them to discover their true gender and helping them to mature was the key to healing his sexuality. The above are just eight of many examples I could cite from people I know that demonstrates what a powerful key to healing it is to listen to alters and tenderly address their needs and fears. Unknown to you, a traumatized part of you could be sabotaging your eating habits, your determination to resist temptation, your will to live, your Christian walk all sorts of things. No matter how devout and determined you are, trying to do the right thing is an oppressively hard, discouraging slog when part of you is surreptitiously sabotaging your efforts, or is unaware of key spiritual truths. Life fills with joy, peace and victory when alters are helped and every part of you knows God and is drawing upon the power of Christ. I have found that if you treat alters as real, the breakthroughs in a persons long term problems is phenomenal, provided you minister to each alter in the power of Christ as you would to a normal person who had suffered that way. In fact, I have never seen anything so powerful in bringing about speedy transformations in hurting people. Christians commonly suffer the frustration of what they might call being unable to turn head knowledge into heart knowledge. Some might think of it in terms of knowing intellectually what should be a life-changing spiritual truth and yet the knowledge does not set them free because their subconscious has not grasped it. Speaking to alters enables one to minister directly to that subconscious, normally unreachable part of the person; achieving in minutes what might otherwise take years. Its nothing like hypnosis. It is simply enabling people to liberate a suppressed part of them that, through being kept ignorant of certain truths, had been surreptitiously undermining their well-being. Humans can concoct a hundred theories as to the best way to treat anything, but any scientist will tell you that going by ones personal experience with treating people is a very unreliable way of proving which treatment is the most effective. Like any Christian, I try to be led of God in the way I minister to people. Unlike some, however, I seem unable to hear God speaking directly to

me. Im embarrassed to admit that I usually seem able to do little better than just pray and hope for the best. As I have continued ministering to alters, however, I have been staggered to note how exactly the way God ministers to alters coincides with the way I have felt led to do it. (For an example of how God relates to alters, see the first link at the end of this series of webpages under the heading, Related Pages.) No matter how many human theories there are, I want to imitate Gods approach, since he knows infinitely more than any of us as to what is truly best. The apostle Paul displayed this attitude of seeking to imitate God: 1 Corinthians 11:1 Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ. And Christ himself had this same attitude: John 5:19 . . . I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. As is the case with belief in demons, or opinions about the most appropriate treatment for a specific disease, or almost anything else in the world, there is a wide range of theories about Dissociative Identity Disorder and whether it even exists. One reason for the confusion is that alters, having suffered devastating levels of rejection in the past, are highly sensitive and will go into hiding in the presence of anyone they fear could reject them (including a counselor, researcher or even the host person). If anyone were to convince a host that alters are not real and that the host should reject as an illusion any manifestation of an alter, alters would panic and quickly go into hiding, rather than risk rejection. At the apparent disappearance of alters, the host will temporarily feel relief, rather like the cruel relief felt by a cancer patient wrongly declared to be cancer-free. It will seem like a magical cure, but the persons underlying problems will remain and his/her true relief will be greatly hampered. Someone might possibly reach the point where he or she is enabling continued dissociation. For example, child alters can be so cute that it is tempting to hold on to them by hindering them from maturing. At least in early counseling or relating to alters, however, it seems to me best to ensure one has thoroughly ministered to each alter, rather than frantically rush into trying to get the alters fused into one person. Like being opened up by a surgeon, treating alters as individuals makes wounded parts accessible for treatment. It would be foolish for a surgeon to sew up a person while there are still inner parts that need attention.

Moreover, people with Dissociative Identity Disorder have been cruelly robbed of the childhood they deserve. Having childlike alters who are relieved of their pain provides these deserving people the privilege of reliving childhood for a while as it was meant to have been enjoyed. Yes, there is a time to move on, but there is also a time to enjoy. In fact, one host who was continually frustrated over what to him seemed the slow rate of healing, actually felt guilty about enjoying legitimate pleasures. This false guilt, quite typical of people suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, was the product of his abusive upbringing in which he was usually punished for acting like a normal fun-loving child. He found it wonderfully liberating to discover that God delighted in him catching up on missed childhood pleasures by enjoying them now, even though he was an adult. Ironically, his frustration at not integrating sooner was actually slowing his healing because he would keep suppressing (and so hurting) alters who wanted to play. Another reason for not trying to force the pace is that the very thought of being united can initially be traumatic for alters because it could be misinterpreted as an attempt to annihilate them. When the matter is treated gently, however, alters can be encouraged to see union as a maturing and as a marriage in which two (or more) truly are better than one and no one loses his or her identity but each contributes his or her own strengths and retains his or her own memories and benefits from the others strengths. Like marriage, it should be a union in which partners are so self-assured that they feel no need to keep asserting their independence. One alter described it as becoming more alive than ever. It is very fulfilling. The decision is up to each individual alter, however. Moreover, what is often the first stage towards merging alters learning to value each other and work together as a team is far more important than merging.

Discerning Between Demons & Multiple Personalities

In an attempt to keep secret their crime, abusers with occult knowledge sometimes deliberately transfer a demon to their victims to keep alters too terrorized reveal themselves and the abuse they suffered. Even when this occurs, it might not apply to all the alters a person has. For example, once a person learns how to split, further splits could occur in response to new traumas after the original abuser has left. Of course, if any alters

are suppressed by demons, those alters are free to reveal themselves once the demons are ejected. Even though the above was not the specific reason, I know several people who discovered they have alters only after being delivered from demons. Not only are alters not demons, however, confusing them with demons could prove disastrous. Nevertheless, we are about to see that, especially with some alters, many things make them disturbingly easy to mistake for demons. The three main reasons are that before alters begin to heal: 1. Some can seem evil 2. They can give themselves bizarre names 3. They themselves can be confused about their identity. Lets explore this. Why Alters Can Seem Evil Early contact with an alter is likely to be unpleasant because this is when an alter is most raw and hurting. Some alters even choose to test whether they will be rejected by deliberately acting offensive in their initial contact. Others can do nasty things in a frantic attempt simply to break out of their isolation and get their host to listen to them. An alter once seemed to try to seduce me. She later admitted that she had observed my moral standards with her host before she revealed herself and she was actually trying to offend me by her apparent seduction because she expected that Id reject her and she thought she might as well get the rejection over with. On the other hand, great integrity is needed when relating to alters because they can be so desperate for love and approval as to be tempted to do almost anything to obtain it. We have noted that when alters first make their presence felt they are likely to have been cut off from many years of developments in their hosts life. Alters that formed before a person became a Christian or when the person was backslidden are therefore likely to have been cut off from exposure to the Gospel and know nothing of a living relationship with Christ. So we can expect them to act like nonChristians. Moreover, alters have suffered almost beyond the realms of human endurance. So it should not surprise if, in their attempt to cope with severe suffering, they gained an undesirable addiction, or are filled with hate or rage because they misinterpreted their misfortune as abandonment by God, or they use strong language to forcefully express their pain or pent up anger and frustration.

Bizarre Names Any of the factors so far mentioned are enough for alters to act in a manner that is out of character for the host person, as he/she is today, and for such alters to superficially seem demonic. Even more confusing is that alters can give themselves names that anyone not experienced with alters might assume would be the exclusive domain of demons. In the webpages you are reading, almost all the Spirit-inspired quotes from an alter are from one who originally called herself Reject. A sister alter called herself Pain, another, Failure, and another, who felt so rejected by God that she wanted to set herself up as her own god called herself Divinity. I have yet to come across alters that that assume the name Evil or Devil, but such names seem quite likely, given the strong tendency of abusers to keep authoritatively telling their young, impressionable victims that they are evil. Alters Confused About Their Own Identity In the battle not to mistake an alter for a demon, it is confusing enough finding alters who hate God, act in nasty ways that for the host person is out of character, and give themselves bizarre names, but it is made even worse by many alters doubting or denying their humanity. It is common for alters to yearn to be human but to have doubts about whether they really are. Part of this is because they were formed as a result of abuse in which they were treated as objects, rather than as humans who had feelings and a will of their own. Also, to dull their pain, many alters have blocked off almost all feeling and this can make them feel less than human. On the other hand, some alters do not want to be human. One alter who kept telling me she was not human revealed that she did not want to be human because humans feel (and are thus exposed to feeling pain) and humans must cope with their sexuality (she feared she was gay and in any case, to her, sex meant abuse). She added that if she were human she would have to relate to other humans and so be exposed to the possibility of rejection. Ironically, this alter was highly offended by the thought of anyone mistaking her for a demon, and unlike demons, who like living in human bodies, she wanted to leave earth completely and live in her imaginary spaceship. We must remember that fantasy can be a powerful way of escaping an intolerable reality and that children are both highly imaginative and impressionable.

It would be easy to mistake for a demon an alter who kept insisting he was a dog. I have spoken to such an alter. The man with this alter was traumatized as a child by being sexually molested by a dog. The alter hated what had happened and concluded that only a dog could be treated that way. On a more positive side, when we consider childrens love of animals and the peaceful lives that animals often seem to have, it should not surprise us that in a desperate attempt to feel safe and escape the reality of their suffering, some alters might choose to convince themselves that they are animals. And given the alienation that abused children often feel, or their longing to escape human suffering, some might choose to convince themselves that they are aliens, fairies, monsters or some other mythical being. Recently, an alter told me of a brother alter who believed he was a bear. As is common for recently surfaced alters, Bear, as he called himself, was too shy to speak, but was listening. So I began gently speaking to him. I had assumed he had chosen to believe he was a bear to help himself feel safe, since few people would dare mess with a grizzly bear. After I spoke to him along those lines for a few moments he interrupted, saying that he was not an animal but was a tattered teddy bear, because, he said, stuffed toys cant feel. (It is common for hurting alters to feel disconnected from their feelings and, of course, anyone who is hurting would prefer to feel unable to feel pain.) Although in seeking comfort, certain alters might assume a false identity, their suffering and memories are real. In the light of what we have so far discovered, it is not hard to conceive of some alters mistakenly supposing they are demons. A common reason is the low self-esteem of alters coupled with the fact that abusers often do their utmost to brainwash their victims into thinking that these innocents are evil, or of the devil. I have also heard of one alter formed in exceptional circumstances who thought he was a demon. In this case, abusers were trying to plant a real demon in the person, and having an alter capable of giving a convincing impression of a demon having been successfully planted was a clever way of foiling the abusers evil intention. These exceptions aside, however, alters usually appear as human, whereas demons only sometimes pretend to be human. Demons are external beings that might enter a person and mess with ones mind but they are no more part of the person than a leech is.

Despite it being easy to mistake some alters for demons, alters could no more be cast out than anyones past experiences and memories could be cast out. And because every alter has deep feelings and sensitivities and is as much a person as the host is, how an alter is treated is critical. You cannot drive alters out, but you can drive alters in; forcing them deeper into a person, where they hide, reeling in the pain of being grossly misunderstood, and unwilling to risk further contact with people even with people who have great potential to help. Usually within just a few days of contact with a loving, accepting person, an alter will begin to heal and feel more peace and so become increasingly delightful to converse with. Even alters that initially seem obnoxious can quickly become devoted, Spirit-filled Christians, deeply in love with Jesus, and highly moral. Tragically, however, some counselors or hosts can be so hasty in misjudging alters as demons that alters withdraw in terror before these self-proclaimed experts or hosts have a chance to truly interact with them and discover how loving, spiritually enlightened and authentically Christian, alters can become. It would be upsetting enough for someone to believe you have a demon, but consider how offended would you feel were someone to believe you are a demon! To further understand why alters panic and go into deep hiding if labeled supernaturally evil (demonic), it is critical to keep in mind it will become even clearer as you keep reading that alters are usually already hurting immensely and highly sensitive to perceived rejection, and fear that their former abusers slanderous insults that they are evil and worthless might be true. Even worse, counselors who fail to distinguish between demons and alters slip into the delusion that an alter falling into gut-wrenching silence means they have cast out a demon, thus inspiring these well-meaning but tragically mistaken helpers to continue their reign of terror on other innocent victims. Counselors who dont even believe in demons but refuse to accept the reality of alters can have a similar, dangerously negative effect.

Caution
If alters began to make their presence felt in you, fears, feelings and battles with temptation would probably resurface that you had thought you were over, but had actually been plaguing you for years in less obvious ways and for reasons you couldnt identify. To the untrained

person, this reactivation of unpleasant feelings and ungodly desires might seem undesirable but in reality it is the best thing that could ever happen. It is like a person finally discovering the cause of the poor health he has endured for years, and learning that through surgery he can enjoy health like he has never before known. Ignorance might seem like bliss because it delays the pain of surgery but it is actually a curse because it keeps the person below full health. An inner voice was making all sorts of false accusations against Alice. By this time, Alice and I had had considerable experience with alters. Not only was this voice not one of her twenty-five alters that we had identified, it seemed quite different to any alter we had ever encountered. In fact, no new alters had surfaced in Alice for quite some time and we expected that there were no more. Along with some of Alices discerning alters, I was fairly sure that the source of this hate and false accusations was a demon. Nevertheless, I decided to be cautious. Rather than aggressively rebuke it as a demon, I compromised by gently affirming that Alice belonged to Jesus, and that because she had his righteousness, no accusations applied to her. Although I affirmed the truth, I wondered if I were being a wimp for not getting more aggressive. The voice, however, soon turned out to be an alter who said she hated both God and Alice and sometimes wanted to kill people. (This was just because she was deeply hurting.) She called herself Accused because she had taken on board all the false accusations that had been hurled at her. In fact, she was so sensitive that she sometimes took even innocent remarks as accusations. Even though I had been unaware of this alter, she had become aware of me and thought warmly towards me. Imagine the damage I would have caused had I added to this alters near-suicidal state by falsely accusing her of being demonic. Because I didnt make that mistake, the alter quickly healed. She discovered that God loved her and all her hate and bitterness left. It should be becoming progressively clearer to the reader why in the early stages of dealing with an alter when it has had little chance to heal it is tempting to despise the alter. Rather than joyfully embrace the healing opportunity, we can react like a sick person who thinks he would prefer the illness he is familiar with, over the unknown pain and dangers of surgery. Naturally, while a person is recovering from surgery he may temporarily feel worse than ever, but now, for the first time, full healing is on its way. People with alters have the same assurance that, despite initial discomfort, things will get better when they let Jesus minister to their alters.

If ever a little knowledge were dangerous, it is on this important subject. There is so much more you need to know, so please proceed to the NEXT PAGE

Help for People with

Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.)
Also Known as Multiple Personality Disorder (M.P.D.)

Healing and Wholeness for Alters

(Alters are Also Known as Insiders)

These pages in Swahili

Part 2
Start at Part 1

Alters eventually need to realize that they are alters, and with some alters, the sooner they are told, the happier they will be but, as will become clearer later, one must be very prayerful about how and when to tell them. The following is what I tell older alters, to help them understand who they are (simpler language is needed for young alters). I place it here because it might further clarify your understanding of alters. It is important to read the rest of this series of webpages, however, to understand the risks involved in revealing this information to alters too soon.

Through no fault of your own you suffered something very traumatic. It is probably your first memory. This was so upsetting that it caused a temporary form of amnesia. With this type of memory loss you dont forget all of the past, only part of it. In fact, you recall some of the past so vividly that it seems to be much more recent than it actually is. Its rather like being Rip Van Winkle, who slept for years and when he woke up what seemed like yesterday was actually many years ago and the world had moved on without him being aware of it. It might be, for instance, that todays date is much later than you suppose. What year do you think this is? I can show you a calendar or newspaper to prove to you the correct date if you wish. You probably also lost memory of your life before the trauma. Even if you have a good memory up until the present, there are probably many years of childhood memories that you are currently cut off from. You are presently conscious of an important, irreplaceable part of you, but there is more to you than you are presently aware of. You have memories that you cannot currently access because the trauma you suffered caused you to become disconnected from the rest of yourself. You disconnected in a courageous attempt to protect the rest of you from dealing with the upsetting experience you suffered, but since that event the rest of you has gained information and skills that will comfort you and allow you to heal. Though you have fractured, this brokenness can be restored. Other parts of you can tell you things about you that you currently dont know. Better still, those memories and skills you have temporarily lost will become your very own when you reconnect with the rest of you. Other parts of you might seem like other people but they share your body. This disconnectedness has previously caused isolated parts of you to have little awareness of you, or little understanding of who you are. This lack of understanding could have caused them to treat you with less love and respect than you deserve. If so, this is most unfortunate, and they probably already regret their mistake and as they get to know you they will certainly regret any hurt they have caused. It is harder to put this in terms that a little child would understand but if you wish to read an attempt, see Explaining to a child alter who he/she is.

The Horror of Being a Child Alter

It is hard to conceive of a more tortured existence than that of an alter living in an adult body and yet trapped in the years of childhood. When treated kindly and wisely, alters can find total relief, but unless they receive the attention and comfort they deserve, their pain will never end this side of the grave. Moreover, unless people with alters learn how to avoid making things worse, they will almost inevitably create still more sources of suffering for their already severely traumatized alters. No matter how much people might despise the fact that they have alters, they must face the obvious reality that no one can have peace while a part of him/her is reeling in pain. To live in denial, and ignore the needs of ones alters will only perpetuate, and quite possibly intensify, ones anguish. Well look at how to give alters the help and comfort they need. For insight into how much child alters typically suffer, try vividly imagining being in the following endless nightmare. You are three years old and have not only suffered deeply damaging trauma, you are endlessly reliving it. As if this were not enough torment, you are trapped in an adult body, which results in the perpetual horror of you being as real as anyone else and yet treated as nothing. You are despised by all of the few people in the world who are vaguely aware of you, and you are sure their reaction proves you are a hideous freak. You cannot let a single person see you play or giggle or cry. Anyone you know of no exceptions catching a glimpse of you acting your age will ignorantly but sincerely conclude that you are literally insane, or at the very least, abnormal. Even children think it weird to see an adult acting like a child, and children are usually quick to speak their mind. So you dare not talk to anyone or even let them chance upon seeing you act in any way that for you is natural. You feel forced to all sorts of extremes to hide from everyone, and yet you have the desperate human need to end psychologically damaging isolation. Moreover, how can you avoid making your embarrassing presence felt? You might not even be potty trained. Imagine, if you dare, the implications of someone in an adult body having that problem. You might not have grasped that when people see you, they see the body of an adult. (The common blindness of alters to the true nature of the

body they live in is only slightly more extreme than that of a dangerously thin anorexic seeing herself as fat.) If you believe you have a childs body when you dont, you wont understand peoples disgust at you acting as a child and so you will take their reaction even more personally. And if you live in the body of a menstruating woman, you will be disturbed that someone very close to you bleeds. No one has ever explained to you that this is not a life-threatening illness. If you have grasped that it is your body that is bleeding, you could be even more distressed. And having the body of a sexually mature woman might subject you to more sexual advances that terrify you. It might be that the one person hardest to be utterly invisible to the host person in whose adult body you live, the one who best understands you and should be your greatest ally finds you such an embarrassment that he or she hates you and, it seems, would literally kill you, given half the chance. You have not only a normal childs craving for hugs and touch but your trauma accentuates this need. Nevertheless, you either find yourself in the body of a person who doesnt get nearly the degree of touch that you as a distressed child need, or you are sentenced to live in the body of a married person who receives touch that is traumatically inappropriate for a child. More alarming still, sexual abuse is quite likely the very trauma that made you an alter in the first place. You could find yourself repeatedly exposed to movies, conversations and behavior that might be acceptable for adults but are deeply upsetting or even terrifying for a three year old. To magnify every source of agony: you find yourself, through no fault of your own, in the devastating predicament of being unable to grow up. This means that unless someone at last recognizes your needs and helps you mature mentally, you must suffer all this loneliness, rejection and devastatingly low self-esteem, not merely for the length of a normal childhood but for twenty, thirty, forty or more years. It can be deeply disturbing when you finally learn that you are actually part of a much older person. Suddenly you no longer feel you know who you are. How should you act now that you know you are not really a child but you still feel like one and you still like doing what others regard as childish things? Realizing that you are decades older than you thought could mean the shattering of many cherished dreams. So much you had hoped for as a child has either already passed or you now know can never happen.

Its not just young alters that can suffer greatly from the way their hosts and/or other people treat them. Consider, for example, an average man who has an alter who believes he is female. Imagine how that alter would be treated, both by the man and by everyone else.

Deepening our Understanding of Alters

Suppose a man suffered trauma at age two, then had a separate trauma at age five, another at six and another at age twenty. The person could have an alter formed at age two, with acute memories of traumas suffered at that age, and an additional alter at age five, another at six and another at age twenty, while yet another part of the person (usually referred to as the host) is at the mans real age. Although an alter forms at a specific age, the alter usually has a range of memories from that time until a different trauma occurs, in which case, an additional alter could be formed and the other alter might go into hiding for decades. Alternatively, the alter could continue to come out to perform certain tasks but in go into hiding at other times. Consider a middle aged man with an alter whose memory is limited to when he was five years old. When this alter speaks out loud, he would have to use the mans vocal cords. Except for the sound of his voice, however, (and even that might betray subtle differences within the limitations of mans vocal range) you would swear you were communicating with a five year old (until the alter begins to mature). It has been said that child alters have the short attention span of a child, but there is more to it than that. Regardless of how old they were when they formed, alters may on occasion be able to tolerate only a few seconds conversation due to overwhelming feelings of confusion, anxiety or emotional (either positive or negative) overload. Alters formed at certain times are likely to develop specific skills. So some people, though not all, have alters assigned to specific tasks. For example, one alter might almost always take over when public speaking is required, another might predominate when parenting skills are needed, and so on. Some alters might also take on specific roles in supporting fellow alters. For example, one might act as a protector, and another might bear the overflow of pain whenever other alters can tolerate no more.

Alters that have kept themselves in deep isolation usually have Rip-VanWinkle-like memory gaps. Once they surface, however, they are capable of picking up new information and skills. Ceasing to be deeply buried is usually dependent upon them feeling safe. Once this happens it is as though they are activated. They can then be specifically addressed and taught new things. They might also happen to overhear relevant conversations that help them learn, but unless they are conversed with directly, there is no guarantee that they are listening. As an openness to the host and other alters develops, an alter broadens his or her skills and knowledge (often quite rapidly) and becomes increasingly like the full person. For example, a child alter that is accepted and understood by the host will usually mature at a much faster rate than a child would. The remarkable speed is not merely because the alter is growing up or learning new things; the alter is learning how to access the hosts mental abilities. The rigid wall between the alter and the rest of the person is coming down. A host can switch from one alter to another, but the degree of control over switching has limits. For example, an alter might at any specific time be asleep (even though the host is awake), or might be away with God, or temporarily too traumatized to speak, or simply feel a need for time-out. Or an alter might choose to remain silent because he/she considers there is insufficient privacy or does not trust someone who might overhear him/her. On the other hand, alters sometimes manifest themselves without their hosts permission and sometimes without even the hosts knowledge. For example, to conceal their actions from their host or avoid being restrained by the host, alters sometimes deliberately put their hosts to sleep before manifesting themselves. One alter said she would achieve this by whispering repeatedly to her host, Youre getting s-l-e-e-p-y. Another seemed able to achieve this more rapidly and called it pulling the plug on the hosts consciousness. Besides differing in apparent age, alters within the same person can differ in personal tastes, abilities, character strengths, weaknesses, fears and so on. Some alters are likely to intensely dislike other alters and/or the host. Thats not surprising when we consider how many of us seem to hate ourselves, at least sometimes during our lives. Nevertheless, perceived rejection or ill-feeling between a persons alters can be very damaging and significantly delay healing. If an alter is angry at other alters and upsetting them, it would probably be worthwhile giving that alter much attention, listening to him/her, comforting him/her, and so on. Seek to calm the alter and gradually coax the alter to be more positively disposed towards the others. Alters formed by the trauma of sexual abuse might be sexually disturbed and it is not impossible for one alter to sexually molest another. Alters are also able to hit each other and

inflict what feels like physical pain. The assaults might not actually be physical but they can seem as real as nightmares seem while you are still sleeping.

My Blunders With Alters

Revealing the full truth to alters is, to say the least, a delicate matter. Even the positive aspects are mind-boggling, such as suddenly learning that dreaded events are already in the past. There are also distressing aspects, such as learning that joyfully anticipated events like graduations and parenthood have already gone. It is helpful to explain to alters that they have actually enjoyed some anticipated events and that they will gradually gain full memory of these positive events. Often, however, the truth brings the crushing news that some cherished dreams will never materialize. This news can be so traumatic that an alter could even split yet again because of it. As God told a young alter, if anything is really lost no matter what God is able to make up for it seven fold. In the short term, however, this solace might seem so inadequate that alters could turn suicidal over shattered dreams, just because someone made them realize the nature of reality without adequately preparing them for it. Since alters are already deeply hurting, conversing with alters is like massaging people who have invisible wounds randomly scattered over their body. Your massage can bring them great relief but with the slightest slip their pain will skyrocket. I was casually talking with a friend, when suddenly an alter of hers began speaking to me for the first time ever. Eager to understand who this alter is, I asked her age. She didnt seem to know. I asked what her earliest memories were and I couldnt seem to get an answer. Trying to get a rough idea of her age, I asked if she recalled a certain key event in my friends life and suddenly I loathed myself, desperately wishing I could have taken back my words. I had foolishly mentioned a key but distressing event in her hosts life that this alter had been unaware of until my blunder. Yes, alters need to know everything eventually, but my timing mentioning it as soon as she first revealed herself was most inappropriate, and highly disturbing for the alter.

On another occasion, I tried to comfort an alter who thought she was only four but felt compelled to help her host in adult tasks that were taxing for a little child. My intentions could not have been more admirable in gently explaining that she really isnt four, but for days this dear alter was so crushed by what she perceived as the implications, that she wished she were dead and refused to speak to me or to God, her best friend. The alter eventually came to terms with what had slipped from my mouth but my timing was particularly atrocious because right then all of the womans other alters were reeling with pain and confusion over another issue. Alters deep fear of rejection (the consequence of very real and bitter experiences), keeps them terrified of what might happen if anyone they do not fully trust learns anything about them. In addition, they usually feel a great responsibility to do their utmost to protect the rest of the person from pain. Rightly or wrongly, this typically includes feeling obligated to keep distressing information secret from their hosts or fellow alters. So alters usually take deep offense at anyone betraying their confidence by letting slip any details about them even their mere existence to anyone else. Despite me knowing this, I suggested to a friend that he begin to inform his wife about alters by handing her some general information about Dissociative Identity Disorder. I thought this safe because there was nothing in the information about his own alters, nor even the suggestion that he himself had alters, but to my dismay, this simple act done without consulting his alters caused one of them to feel deeply betrayed and to be furious with his host for days. Ive also had two unfortunate instances stemming from not realizing who I was speaking with. In the first instance, an alter who at the time was completely unknown to me was tentatively reaching out to me while pretending to be another alter. The other time, I assumed I was communicating with the host when it was actually a recently-surfaced alter. It is common for alters not to identify themselves, sometimes because they are shy and sometimes simply because they dont consider how difficult it is for people to distinguish between alters who share the same body and vocal cords. The problem is that a persons alters usually differ markedly from each other. An alter who believes she is three will think and act very differently to an alter formed as a teenager who, in turn, will differ greatly from a middle-aged host. Likewise, an alter who has only recently surfaced will be very different to one who has traveled much further on the healing journey. These differences mean that the same behavior that would represent a praiseworthy advance for one alter might indicate a disappointing regression if displayed by another alter.

We instinctively adjust our expectations according to who we believe we are talking to. If someone is acting more childlike or less intelligent or less Christian than we have come to expect for that person, we are likely to register our surprise with a mild rebuke or remark that the alter we think we are talking to would take in his or her stride but could deeply wound an alter who is at a very different stage of the healing journey. Alters need to know that failing to identify themselves, rather than being the extra-safe way of testing the waters that they suppose, is the very thing that exposes them to the greatest danger of getting hurt. They will inevitably do it from time to time, however, even if merely because they forget that it is not obvious to others which alter is speaking. In the worst of my blunders, alters recovered within a few days. The alters later said that the fact that they knew I genuinely cared for them helped them forgive me. Writes one of them: Yes, people make mistakes, but once we alters understand that this is very hard, not just on us but on you, we can help you deal with the challenges as you help us deal with our pain. But though I used to pride myself in being tactful and considerate, I quickly discovered that alters are so hyper-sensitive that my best attempts to help are like trying to trim toenails with a chainsaw. Alters desperately need help. Doing nothing could be more cruel and dangerous than the most serious blunder. So caving into the difficulties and giving up trying to help alters is not a compassionate option. The need for courage in befriending alters is as immense as the need for superhuman wisdom. Even the famous counselor, teacher and author, Dr. Neil T Anderson, writes in his book Set Free (page 219) about the most basic aspect of ministering to alters distinguishing alters from demons: Sometimes it is difficult even if you have a lot of experience and spiritual discernment. Even the most experienced and mature people can be deceived. I certainly have been. Since I have yet to find an infallible therapist to whom I could relinquish the task, I can only pray more, and trust myself less, and lean heavily upon God. Heres a Scripture everyone relating to alters needs to pray often: Psalms 141:3 Set a guard over my mouth, O LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips.

Jesus: the Perfect Alter

An alter told one of Jakes alters: You exist as a separate part of Jake because Jake was pushed beyond human endurance. Then you come along like a lifeboat. You were loaded up with pain and set to sail. So was I. It wasnt our fault. This almost exactly describes the role of a scapegoat. The term scapegoat has entered everyday speech via the Old Testament. It has surprisingly much to tell us. Once a year, to atone for sin, two goats were chosen. One of them was sacrificed, paying the ultimate price for the nations sins. Of course, most of the nations sins were essentially average and yet in the final analysis each sin took no less than the death penalty for the blame to be fully resolved and extinguished. The remaining goat called the scapegoat stayed alive. Like the other goat, it was utterly innocent of any human sin, but after the sacrificial death of the other one, the sins of the entire nation were symbolically placed on its head and it was driven into the desert, symbolically taking the sins away from the people, never to be seen again (Leviticus 16:5-22). Animal sacrifices, though hopelessly inadequate to resolve our guilt problems, were divinely instituted to point prophetically to the one sacrifice that can meet our souls deepest needs. The sacrifice to end all sacrifices would have to be human, since it is humans who are blameworthy. But to end all blame, the perfect sacrificial victim would, like the goats, have to be utterly blameless. Unless he had absolute moral perfection like no other human the world has ever seen a human sacrifice would be worthless. Since anyone who sins deserves to die, if any of us were to volunteer as a sacrifice we would only be suffering what we ourselves deserve, not suffering for the sins of others. The only perfect sacrifice is the One of whom John the Baptist said, Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. The entire Old Testament sacrificial system was ordained by God to prepare his people for the Savior of the world so that they would understand what our Lord achieved by dying on the cross. He is the embodiment and fulfillment of the whole Jewish sacrificial system. So when God instituted the use of a scapegoat, he was helping his people understand Jesus, who is the ultimate scapegoat.

That two goats were needed to atone for the nations sins one dying and then the other released alive points not only to the removal of our sins but to the death and the subsequent resurrection of Jesus. Not just Jesus death but also his resurrection were needed to resolve utterly the guilt and eternal consequences of humanitys offenses. Just as Jesus rose to a new life, so he has the power to give us a new life, after fully extinguishing all of our blame and shame. Humanitys only true Innocent took upon himself all the blame, letting himself be stripped naked and abused to death so that you could have his peace and purity, and rise with him to a breathtakingly new life that begins here and now. I am frequently deeply moved by the selfless, sacrificial way in which alters voluntarily take hurts and rejection upon themselves in order to protect the rest of the person. Like the perfect alter, Jesus wants to take upon himself all the guilt, all the horror, and all the shame you have ever suffered. He wants every trace of filth and pain and rejection to be dumped on him until it kills him, because in killing him, its power to hurt you is also killed. If you were living in ancient Israel, it would not just be your sin that was symbolically placed on the scapegoat, but the sins of the entire nation. Even more astounding, the sins of the entire world were actually placed on Jesus when he agonized on the cross. This is significant. Usually, alters hurt, not because of their own sin, nor even the sin of their host, but because of the sins of an abuser or some other cruel person. There is no need even to work out exactly who is at fault and to what degree, however, because all the sin and all the blame and shame were put on the ultimate Scapegoat. Alters do the best they can but no alter can totally remove all blame, shame and pain. The host still feels some of it. And even if an alter could perfectly achieve full peace for the host, what about the alter? What can be done to relieve the alters own suffering? We have noted that the pain an alter bears is almost never the alters fault. The source of the hurt is the sins of others, and he/she bears the pain, sacrificing his/her own well-being for the sake of the host. This is Jesus role. Being God, he and he alone can do it to perfection. And he does it for all of humanity. For an alter to hold on to the pain is to suffer unnecessarily (which would break Gods heart) and to render Jesus torturous death a waste, as far as both the alter and host are concerned. Dumping pain upon an innocent alter is an act of desperation that can keep a person alive until he/she finds Gods perfect remedy: Jesus. Asking an alter to bear pain is at best an emergency measure only. Like

putting chewing gum on a leaking fuel tank, it could save someone temporarily, but something more effective needs to be done as soon as possible. It is vital that alters be relieved of their pain as quickly as possible, both for their sake and so that their hosts can receive full healing. Jesus is the alter par excellence; literally the alters alter. For both the host and all alters, Jesus bore all the horrific consequences of sin, completely removing all the blame, pain and shame, destroying it all by his own death, so that none of it could ever come back to hurt the host or any of the alters. Please dont let familiarity with the following Scripture rob you of its full impact. Read slowly and prayerfully what it says of Jesus, the perfect alter: Isaiah 53:3-6 He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. Jesus took upon himself full punishment for every sin that has ever been committed. He was betrayed, disowned, spat on, stripped naked, made a public spectacle of, shamed, laughed at, degraded, slapped, punched, flayed alive, spiritually cursed (Galatians 3:13), rejected by his people and by God (Mark 15:34), tortured to death for you. He bore your rejection, your heartache, your humiliation. For you, he took the pain, the shame and the blame. Gods plan has always been that we offload our pain on to him, not upon an alter. 1 Peter 5:7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. Psalms 55:22 Cast your cares on the LORD and he will sustain you . . . When alters were formed, the host did not understand the implications of this truth, but now it can be explained to alters so that they can be relieved of all their torment by handing over to the Lord their pain, distress, and secrets, letting the Lord of glory, who lovingly volunteered to be humanitys scapegoat, bear it all on the cross and annihilate it with

his own death. Then alters can be free to enjoy life and can help hurting parts of their host, not by personally bearing hurts and secrets, but by encouraging fellow alters to lay all their pains and burdensome secrets upon the crucified Lord and rise in the triumphant new life of our resurrected Lord.

Healing your Alter

Every reader will benefit from the next few paragraphs, but in particular I would like to address every reader who has Dissociative Identity Disorder. 1 Corinthians 6:17 But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. Ephesians 5:30 for we are members of his body. John 15:4-5 . . . No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. Just as an alter and host are an inseparable part of each other, Jesus is an essential part of every true Christian. And just as an alter endeavors to remove pain from him/her host, Jesus longs to remove your pain. Infinitely more effective than any alter, however, Jesus has the power to fully absorb and kill in his own body every sinful act that has ever hurt you. Sin is the issue because anyone hurting or violating you has violated Gods loving laws and sinned against someone God passionately loves you. The Bible uses various word pictures to portray how utterly Jesus will remove from you the sins that have hurt you. In an era when ocean depths were as inaccessible as the furthest star, Scripture speaks of God burying sin in the deepest sea (Micah 7:19). In another part, it speaks of sin being removed as far as the east is from the west (Psalms 103:12). The ultimate Scapegoat longs to put an infinity between you and everything that has ever hurt you. However, because God is not a thief and is the exact opposite of an abuser, his lofty morality and deep respect for you compels him to hold back until you give him full permission to take your pain from you. And because God is a God of love and truth, he

cannot operate in an atmosphere of denial and mistrust. He waits to be welcomed into your deepest secrets and pains so that he can do what he yearns to do gently and lovingly remove everything that is hurting you. Of course, the Almighty already knows everything that has happened to you, and every good and bad way you have responded. Not only will he not be offended or shocked, he will cherish you sharing with him painful, frightening or disgusting things that are so significant to you that you find them hard to speak about. Because he loves you unreservedly in utter purity, unselfishness and respect for you, God treasures you telling him all about these things. He esteems you sharing the intimate details as proof of your love and trust. Not only does the Lord have every answer you desperately need, he is tender and gentle. He reels in pain when you suffer needlessly by you holding on to burdens and distress that Jesus has already suffered to make their removal possible. Christ exposes his heart when he cried, How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! (Luke 13:34). He agonizes for you, yearning for you to stop living in denial or backing off from his tender compassion. I know it takes great courage for you to hand your secrets over to him. Youve been let down and ridiculed by people for as long as you can remember. You fear God might be like all those other humans, but wait a moment: God isnt human. His warm, personal love and tender devotion and faithfulness to you is flawless. He has none of the sinful, selfish, fickle ways of the people who have hurt you. Make Jesus day: let him extinguish in his own tortured body your burning grief and pain. If it were with any pride that I told Alices alter of my new revelation about Jesus being the alters alter, it was short-lived. It turned out that God had already told her that a couple of days earlier. In yet another email to one of Jakes alters, she wrote: I was sitting on the sofa this morning reading in the Bible about Jesus death when Jesus appeared and knelt down in front of me. He pointed out that his torture lasted all night. He was naked, he was beaten, he was rejected and shamed. They mocked his body. I asked him if any of his suffering was sexual. He said, I was a naked target. What do you think? He was betrayed and hurt beyond words. His friends denied him. They were ashamed of him. He was sold for money to be tortured.

Jesus leaned forward and whispered in my ear, I know. He let those words sink in. I know all the pain you have suffered and I have been through it. He is holy and glorified. He has won and he knows the way to victory. His scars are a badge of honor that he took that pain. Just as we took the pain so that our host could move on, Jesus took the pain so that we can move on. He is our alter. I dont feel alone and scared anymore. I have an alter to bear my pain. Being pain-free is really wonderful. When two of Alices other alters got upset recently, I wasnt so full of pain that I couldnt help them. I was able to bring them to Jesus. It was amazing. This dear alter is finding increasing fulfillment in using her insights gained as an alter to minister in the power of Christ to other alters. Interestingly, her host has an intercessory calling upon her life. True intercessors sometimes feel intensely the pain of others but they dont hold on to the pain. Their privileged task is to bring that pain to Christ and leave the pain with the One who suffered to set people free. When we are in too much pain to think straight, we long for a quick fix in which all memory of painful events vanishes. Nevertheless, people with Dissociative Identity Disorder know that this simply does not work. They tried to kill memories and some almost seemed to achieve it for a while, but it brought them no real peace. We need to be free from pain but we need to retain our dignity and humanity by being able to mentally come to terms with the experience. Moreover, for the memory to disappear would render all our past tragedies a useless waste. Our tears are too precious to God for him to let them be shed in vain. He longs not only to remove our pain but to transform our past suffering into something valuable, even as Jesus suffering is of inestimable value. People who have let God heal them of Dissociative Identity Disorder find themselves uniquely placed to understand the power and compassion of God and to bring this tender love and healing to other hurting people. They find themselves colaborers with Almighty God, doing things of eternal significance for people who are of infinite value to the God of love. They know that their past tragedies have uniquely empowered them for this intensely fulfilling privilege and they will spend eternity in awe at how God turned something that hurt God horrifically your own suffering into something that brings them endless glory.

Various Types of Alters

I will not attempt to categorize every possible type, but awareness of certain types of alters can significantly speed healing. Not everyone with D.I.D. has every type mentioned below, but being aware of the possibility could enable you to discover and help such an alter much quicker.

Protector Alters
Protector alters shield other alters by putting on a tough front and trying to force to back down anyone they see as a threat. Tragically, they suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) which causes them to often see danger where there is none. The easiest understood instance of PTSD is a soldier who upon returning from the front line to the safety of home is still on hyper-alert, unable to sleep property, diving for cover whenever a car backfires, and so on. So protector alters are hyper-vigilant and much more suspicious than current circumstances require. The alters the protector seek to shield usually accept the protectors assessment of danger, and even if they do not, the protector still usually tries to get them into hiding at the first perception of danger. Unfortunately, protectors often hinder healing by assessing counselors as threats. They can also perceive their host as a threat and so keep alters and/or information hidden from their host. A host can be perceived as a threat if he/she might blab things the protector believe should be kept secret or if the host is not cautious enough, and so on. Even though these dear alters might initially hinder or even sabotage the healing process, they are not enemies. Even if their help is sometimes misguided, they are highly traumatized, self-sacrificing alters courageously trying their utmost to keep the person safe. Do all you can to work with, rather than against, a protector. Continually strive to get the protector on-side and to allay all the protectors concerns. Even empower the protector, giving him/her right of veto.

As the protector gradually learns to trust you, much progress can be made in discovering other alters. Once on board, protectors are very valuable allies in the healing process.

Sleeper Alters
You have probably heard of sleeper spies or terrorist cells that remain inactive for years until they are needed. Some people have certain alters like this. They remain inactive sometimes for many years until a crisis alerts them that they are needed and then they come to the fore. They can use various means to alert them of a crisis. It might, for example, be whenever a person engages in more self-harm than usual. Another way is to be particularly close to a certain alter and be activated when that alter is particularly distressed. Some of these alters are helper alters that support alters when things become unbearable for one of them. (By coming to the rescue they might sometimes prevent the formation of a new alter.) Other sleeper alters are protectors who are quite strong and can take the person over almost completely during a supposed crisis. Being sleeper alters means that they are likely to have been somewhat out of the loop while the rest of the person has been healing and so they might be less in possession of all the relevant facts than some other alters. Even more confusing is that in order to exercise the authority they feel the emergency demands, they might pretend to be another well-liked or powerful alter. The result can be very confusing for the rest of the person. So if a person suddenly starts acting out of character, a sleeper alter might be the reason. The difficulties in helping sleeper alters are obvious when you consider that since the very nature of a sleeper alter is to remain hidden until an emergency, they appear only rarely. Moreover they see their key function as supporting/protecting the person by remaining hidden and unconnected most of the time, so even if discovered, they feel the need to return to hiding. Obviously, it is very important to try to convince a sleeper alter that it is now safe to remain out of hiding indefinitely. Such alters usually find not returning to hiding very scary, however, and can feel that by remaining out they are being unfaithful to their role and letting the whole person down. The easiest way I have found to break this is for the alter to fall in love with his/her marriage partner. They crave love and understanding so much that when they find it, they will be very reluctant

to lose it again by going back to sleep. Another possibility is for other alters to give the new alter lots of love, understanding and comfort. Of course, the ultimate counselor remains Jesus. Encourage alters to let Jesus share his heart with them. He will reassure them.

Abusive Alters
Often when one takes the time to get to know an alter who is being harsh to fellow alters or hurting them or even sexually abusing them, it turns out that they actually believe they are helping. They might think, for example, that they are toughening up the alters, thus making them less vulnerable to abuse. Or, in the hope of saving the person from even worse abuse, they might enforce an abusers oppressive rules about never crying, or punishing them for doing anything the abuser might object to. Often the abusive alter is unaware that the abuser no longer has access to them and so the alter continues the oppression when there is no longer the slightest need. As always, it is important to try to understand what motivates an alter and to gently help the alter see through any misconceptions the alter has.

Introjects
An introject is a rather amazing type of abuser alter. Until the misconception is exposed, an introject not only acts like an external person the survivor knew, but every alter within the survivor including the introject alter actually believes that this alter is not an alter but is the real external person. At first, this seems astounding but it is consistent with the wide range of different things that alters can think themselves, including animals, aliens and so on. Often that external person is someone who abused the person who has this alter. Even though not all external abusers realize it, this type of introject alter enforces the external abusers wishes upon the alters when the abuser is absent. In fact, it can continue even after the abuser had died. Some introjects actually report back to the abuser as informers. Not surprisingly, introjects have themselves suffered immensely. It is important to bring introject alters to the point where they finally realize they are part of the abuse survivor and not part of the external abuser. Helping them discover the current date and that they are in the body of someone other than the abuser can help. Once introjects become loyal to the survivor, the persons safety is significantly enhanced. I

suggest you do not get sidetracked now but elsewhere on this website I have a detailed record of counseling an introject.

Unique Challenges in Helping Alters

* Just because an alter was formed at a certain age does not mean that the alter has all the skills normally associated with that age. For example, it is quite possible for an alter of an excellent reader to be formed in her twenties and yet be unable to read. * Even though you could be focusing exclusively on one alter or the host, you must always remain alert to the possibility that other alters could be overhearing or observing. * Usually a significant factor in the formation of alters is that the host had no one who would sympathize with him/her. Any feeling of isolation and rejection at their very formation is often magnified still further by the way alters are subsequently treated even by their own host, who usually has had no training in understanding alters. All of this would be enough to make almost anyone feel suicidal and to feel he/she is nothing. But on top of this, alters can mistakenly suppose that being an alter means they are less than human and almost literally nothing. Even if they dont think they are toys, animals, aliens or demons, it is common for alters to doubt that they are fully human. Many factors contribute to this. For example, our emotions are a significant part of our humanity, and alters are commonly in so much pain that they are largely dissociated from their feelings and emotions. They can feel more like zombies than normal people. Moreover, alters are often formed as a result of being treated callously, as though they were less than human. In addition, to admit to oneself that one is human is to raise ones hopes of being treated with dignity and respect and perhaps even love. Most alters experience affirms that this is unlikely and that it is less painful never to get ones hopes up by letting oneself think one is human . I discovered another significant factor in alters feeling less than human when I wrote on friendship greeting cards and posted them to some of Alices alters. When I had only been aware of a few of Alices alters I

was better able to give them individual attention, but it grew harder when many more appeared in fairly rapid succession. One day, the alter I had known for the longest time suggested that I give a greeting card to one of two troubled alters. She said that giving them something tangible would be beneficial. I decided to buy many cards that were each different, address each one to a different alter, and write a unique, personal message on each card, affirming my appreciation of that alter. Their excitement over receiving their own greeting card far exceeded my expectations. I had often spoken individually to each alter, so I was surprised that the cards would have such a powerful effect on them. Then I realized that most of these alters had not only never in their lives personally received the smallest of gifts, most had not even one item that they could call their own. I ask hosts to think hard about how they might correct this. Until I came along, these alters had been in such isolation that they rarely interacted with people and often had not even had a name, much less had been addressed by name. Being continually and solely treated like this would be highly dehumanizing for anyone. Giving each of them a little gift was another significant step in affirming to them that they are truly real and not, as some people think, a figment of the imagination. Time and again, I have found that a significant aspect of healing involves alters having their humanity affirmed. It is obviously psychologically unhealthy depressing at the very least for a person to feel less than human. Likewise, it is unhealthy for people to have any part of them that feels not human or less than human. For a person to be in his or her prime, each part of the full person needs to be psychologically and spiritually in top condition. It is tempting to fear that affirming each alters existence and individuality would perpetuate a persons fracturedness. Consider, however, how restoring each individual part of a machine to full strength and pristine condition would cause the entire machine to function so much better. In fact, fully restored parts fit together better than rusted parts. Likewise, if an alter is empowered to be strong, confident and enjoy life, the entire person will benefit. Moreover, confident, assertive alters feel more empowered to share their secrets, thus breaking down the walls that keep a person fractured. Over and over, as I have affirmed alters, building up their selfconfidence and relationship with God, I have seen them develop all sorts of unexpected abilities that have immensely benefited the entire person. D.I.D. exists because of burying things and avoiding issues. The last

thing you want is to further bury things. You want to heal, not perpetuate the pain and disfunction. So I firmly believe that it is important for alters to realize that they are very lovable, deeply loved by God and are fully human. Lets briefly examine the issue of their humanity. Even though there is more to your life than just a portion of your life experiences and memories, you were fully human throughout every experience and memory you had. Suppose a hit on your head caused you to forget most of your past and you could otherwise function fairly normally. Would that make you cease to be human? Likewise, although alters have a portion, and not all, of a persons life experiences, memories, feelings, reactions and thoughts, they are fully human. Just as we are real humans despite the fact that none of us can consciously recall every experience and thought that we have ever had, so alters are really human, even though an alter is not aware of everything that happened to the person. Someone with alters who was trying to live in denial told me, Its not like alters are real flesh and blood . . . I replied, Alters do have flesh and blood. The body you call your own is as much theirs as yours. A man told me about an alter of his that had just recently surfaced. He is kind of a goofball, he said. He does not know his name or age. My heart sank. Hopefully, as reader of these webpages, you have been so alerted to the sensitivities of alters that you would never use such an insulting name when speaking about alters, especially when they might overhear. In actual fact, if alters first reveal themselves after some alters have already been helped, it is common for them to have overheard conversations and to have grasped from this that they are not the age that they had previously thought they were. Coming to terms with this is confusing for an alter but the dawning of an awareness of an age discrepancy is a sign of intelligence, not stupidity. Lets continue listing unique challenges in helping alters: * We have seen that whenever an alter faces a new trauma, another split is likely to occur. If the previous alter then goes into deep hiding, it is akin to death for the alter, in that often the alter ceases to develop or have much in the way of new experiences and it is left behind in a time warp. But the rest of the person continues to progress. For at least one alter Ive met, this perceived similarity between going into long term hiding and physical death made it hard for her to grasp emotionally

(even though she knew it intellectually) that to kill herself by actually committing suicide is more serious than her killing herself simply by going into hiding. It only barely registered in her consciousness that killing her body would kill the host and all the alters. She at least realized that she shared the one body with her host and all the alters. When alters are just beginning to understand who they are, they usually have no conception at all that their bodies are also their hosts bodies. There are obvious dangers in regarding suicide as less serious than it really is. If you come across a suicidal alter, in addition to the usual support, ensure that the alter knows that his/her death would kill not just the alter but the host and other alters. * The fact that alters were created because of the need to deal with severe inner pain can leave some alters scared to let go of pain (to experience full inner healing). They fear that without the pain they would either cease to exist or their reason for living would cease. Obviously, this misconception would need to be addressed in order for alters not to sabotage their own healing. * A woman was in love and wanted to marry. Her little five-year-old alter also loved the man and wanted the marriage. I was concerned. It is obviously inappropriate for a child to be exposed to marital relations, and even more so for a little alter who had been formed precisely because of the horror of sexual abuse. The little alter affirmed to me that she knew that married people liked doing things to each other that she didnt want. I asked her how she would handle that situation. Id just go off and play with God, she said. But how would you know when it is safe to return? Id just ask God, she replied, full of confidence. But you deserve lots of hugs, too, I said. I get lots of hugs from God, she replied. It was quite a while before they married and by then things had radically changed. For his own personal reasons, not related to her at all, her fianc announced that he wanted to take things very slowly after the wedding and delay consummating the marriage for weeks. By the time the wedding was approaching, however, their fiancs plan was too slow for them. The alters had so healed that even those aged three were begging God that as soon as it were morally acceptable they be allowed to go further sexually than their fianc intended so quickly after marriage. A significant factor in this change was all the alters growing

very close to each other, enabling the younger ones to learn from the much older ones about the positive aspects of sex. The other important factor is that they felt totally free from pressure. They knew they could withhold sex and still enjoy this mans unconditional love. His selfless love filled them with a desire to pour out their love upon him. Moreover, after a few months an alter surfaced for the first time while the couple were making love. This was not because the alter was triggered but because she found it so pleasurable. It affirmed to the alter that live was worth living. Not long afterwards another alter surfaced during lovemaking. This one had thought she was dead but the pleasure she had felt during lovemaking affirmed to her that she was alive. Later, still more new alters were, as it were, pleasantly awakened from sleep through lovemaking. These alters quickly discovered they were now much older and married. They healed rapidly because by now the host had many alters who knew the ropes and were able to quickly teach the new ones such things as how to access the memories of other alters. It was a joy to see how painless this whole process was for them, in huge contrast to the slow, agonizing progress that healing had been for the first alters to surface. Another woman writes: Once, before I knew about D.I.D. but after God had begun talking to me about inner child parts, I was moving towards an intimate encounter with my husband and started to panic inside. Realizing this might be a reaction from child parts, I felt led to say, Its okay. Im an adult. Im married, and its okay for this to happen. I dont mind. They seemed confused and shocked, questioning, Really? Are you sure its okay? Yes, it really is, I replied. So you can just go play now or something. Well, if your really sure . . . came the response. Then another part a young girl gently ushered them away. Alters require time to develop the level of confidence in God and in her future husband that this alter displayed, but it certainly opened my eyes as to what is possible. The only problem I could foresee is that her hosts husband would need to avoid being overly spontaneous by giving the alter no warning before doing something that would be inappropriate in a presence of a little girl. I presume the same principle could apply if an adult wanted to see or read something that could disturb a tiny alter.

Wherever practical, however, the ideal is to wait until all alters who believe they are children mature. This should in no way be enforced upon them but it might take as little as just a few months if they get lots of support in their healing. * If alters no longer feel it is safe to reveal themselves to you, they will go quiet. If they suspect you will reject, despise or criticize them, you will not hear from them. They will likewise clam up if they suspect you will expose them or betray them by telling their secrets to someone they do not, as yet, trust. If you do not realize this, and you have alters, you will wrongly conclude from their silence that you do not have alters or that they have now gone or integrated with you. * To someone unsure as to how to talk to her own alters, Alice wrote: I asked my alters (who are now very chatty) what helped them open up. They said they loved being read to. (Reading out loud has loads of benefits anyway and helps me greatly with public speaking). In a story, they would feel what the characters were feeling. I used books with non-threatening stories. If one of the story characters was sad and an alter could relate, Id stop reading and let her/me cry. It was a safe way for alters to express feelings, without directly connecting with their own pain. I suggest a childrens book or a book about children. Young alters can relate to children. Animal stories were also a big way for my alters to express themselves. I cried through the book, Holes. It really touched their fears of injustice. The movie Second Hand Lions was brilliant for them. They laughed, cried and didnt feel alone. At the end of this webseries is a link to a couple of short Christian stories written especially for young alters. * Although it is common to suppose that all alters have been identified when there are still some in hiding, it is also possible to suppose there are more alters than there really are. Im hiding another alter, lied a female alter. She did this because if she were rejected because of what she then revealed, only this non-existent alter would be rejected. She could continue to converse with me on other subjects. * Yet another challenge unique to alters is that timid alters typically sleep during the day (when they find things the most stressful) and come

out late at night when everyone else (host included) is asleep. It would therefore be productive for counselors to regularly phone late at night but this is obviously very draining for the counselor and largely impractical.

Healing and Integration of Alters

(Alters are Also Known as Insiders)

These pages in Swahili

Part 3
Start at Part 1

Danger
Before moving on, I must alert you to two serious dangers and hindrances to healing. One is caving into a fear of people so that you let no one close enough to help you on your healing journey. The other danger is becoming too dependent upon a single individual. Lets investigate that latter danger more deeply. The first person I ever knew who had Dissociative Identity Disorder Ill call her Samantha had fled a dangerous cult to live interstate with a young woman Ill call Julie. Samantha had suffered horrific Satanic Ritual Abuse and needed virtually around-the-clock care from Julie to protect her from suicide and other dangers. So she moved in with Julie. Julie was an inexperienced but devoted and competent counselor and Samantha quickly became highly dependent upon her emotionally. The strain upon Julie was such that she ended up getting sick and had to take a compete break from helping anyone. This was so devastating to Samantha that many of her alters took it as rejection and she tragically ended up returning to her abusers. To my knowledge, virtually all the healing was lost and, years later, she is still in torment.

Another woman with D.I.D. found acceptance and the fathers love she had always craved in a kind pastor. This caused her to feel an abnormally strong bond with this pastor such that she was constantly battling feelings of jealousy regarding him, and when he needed to move to a church in another part of the country it felt like rejection to her and it proved a huge setback in her healing journey. These are just two examples of how people with Dissociative Identity Disorder can quickly develop unhealthily powerful attachments to those who show them kindness, and what initially feels good and speeds their recovery can end up sabotaging their healing. Until they heal, people with D.I.D. might have many casual friends but deep inside they are tortured by extreme loneliness and intense yearning for acceptance, further compounded by the belief that anyone discovering the full truth about their past would reject them. They feel haunted by dark, tormenting secrets that they keep suppressing from everyone (and even from themselves). To release that fearful pressure and isolation by sharing their secrets and find warm acceptance is such a relief that it powerfully bonds a person with whoever the secrets are shared. This, combined with the false but strong deception that virtually no one would accept them if they truly knew them, typically causes people with Dissociative Identity Disorder to feel strongly attached to, and dependent upon, a counselor or whoever they open up to. To understand the power of the forces at work, remember that parts of the person are literally like little children desperate for a parents love and approval, others are like older children yearning for a best friend and still others are like teens pining for romantic love. It is not at all unusual for some to be sexually attracted to someone of the same gender as their own body. And all these different alters can believe they have found in the one counselor (or friend they have opened up to) all the love and acceptance they have been starved of all their lives. Almost overwhelmingly powerful forces combine, not only on a conscious level, but on an subconscious level. Little children typically think their parents infallible, and starry-eyed lovers are blinded to faults in the person they idolize. People who are hurting are exceptionally sensitive. Alters can take the tiniest thing as a huge personal insult. Bring all these components together and the result is such intense emotions that if you and your alters bond exclusively to one person, then even temporarily losing access to this person can feel not just like being orphaned but being widowed, and like being betrayed by your best friend, all at the one time.

What makes these attachments so dangerous is that no one but God can guarantee never to die or get sick or need a break. It also puts enormous pressure on the person who is the object of this dependence. Becoming so crucial to anothers healing and well-being can easily so overload a helper that he or she cracks under the demands placed on him or her. Moreover, it makes the person with Dissociative Identity Disorder dangerously vulnerable to exploitation if the one they depend so highly upon has the slightest moral weakness. It is for very good reason that it is considered not just unwise but highly unethical for a counselor to have a romantic relationship with someone he or she is helping. Doing so is enough to get professionals deregistered because it is well established that people who are emotionally wounded are highly vulnerable and can so easily end up feeling emotionally attached to anyone offering them support. This is further exasperated by the fact that people with Dissociative Identity Disorder usually need prolonged help. Anyone recovering from Dissociative Identity Disorder needs to be in a position where the most significant person in their recovery could at any moment die or be forced by circumstances to withdraw without it undermining much of the progress made. An alter wrote to me, saying: My hosts husband left her alone with all her outside children to raise all by herself. He told her, You need too much. We dont want you to go away from us like he did because we need too much because that made our host cry and cry and cry and throw up until she almost died. We don't want to make that happen to her again. I replied: Precious Friend, I understand your needs. They are very deep, intense and critically important. I feel for you and long to be used of God to help you have all these needs met. But although humans can facilitate, your needs are so great that it is critical for your well-being and for other people that you dont look to other people to meet your needs. You actually need someone who is available 24/7 and who can guarantee not to burn out or die. Otherwise you are vulnerable to more heart-break and you have already suffered far too much of that.

I will do my best, but the only safe and totally effective way to meet your needs is through Jesus and through each part of you loving, understanding and supporting every other part of you. As you understand, it is not fair on yourself, or on any counselor, to look to a counselor as if he were a substitute husband who pledges to be with you till death and gives you priority over everyone else who needs him. I know you dont think this is what you are asking but it is so easy to slip into this degree of dependence without realizing it. Nor is it safe for you, or fair on any husband, for you to unconsciously make a husband into a substitute mother and father for your every alter, even though your alters desperately need it. This does not mean that your needs cannot be met but they must be met through Jesus and through you loving and supporting each part of you. My role must not be primary, but must be to help you discover how to have your needs met by Jesus and by yourself. Since only God is immortal, infallible and unchangeable, alters need to learn as quickly as possible to keep availing themselves of human help while at the same time shifting their dependence as much as they can from humans to God. For this reason I have established a DID group, an important goal of which is that members bond to the group rather than to myself or any individual in the group. Other people are an important part of the healing process but alters are best helped by looking primarily to God and their host for nurturing, approval, parenting and so on.

The Goal of Integration

In another webpage I explain why I believe people with Dissociative Identity Disorder have superior brains. So I dont believe the goal of integration should be to become entirely like people have never had D.I.D., any more than the goal of a genius should be to lower himself to having normal intelligence. (I do not have D.I.D. myself, so I say this without bias.) The goal should be for all the alters to be identified and work harmoniously as a team that dearly love and support each other, know each others secrets, and have full access to each others memories and abilities. I think it best for them to normally sleep at the same time and be alert at the same time.

Towards Wholeness and Integration

A child alter, who had been formed because of sexual abuse, was greatly disturbed. She who had seen herself as a little girl had come to realize that she had the body of a mature woman. This alarmed her because she believed that a sexually mature body would make her more subject to unwanted male attention. She found comfort when I explained how having an adults strong body, and the authority and believability that goes with it, made her less vulnerable to molesters. But she was still upset by the thought of no longer being a child. Among the blunders I mentioned earlier was telling an alter who thought she was four years old that she was an adult. This is the alter. Before I blundered, she had already grasped that she had an adult body. To point out that she also had an adult mind had seemed a small step to me, but not to her. Until then she had seen herself as a little girl trapped in an adults body. She found the thought of being a full adult horrifying because she saw it as being robbed of her childhood and of her dreams. After me telling her too early and too bluntly, she had coped primarily by living in denial of what I had said. A couple of weeks later she asked, How old am I really? I looked to the Lord, anxious not to make another mistake. I began a careful explanation of how she had come to exist as an alter and concluded with, Its most unfair that youve been dumped with all the pain and have missed out on all the good memories, but Jesus suffered so that he could take all your pain upon himself. You got left behind when the rest of you grew up but God wants to make you happy by helping you catch up so that you are reunited with the rest of you. That way, youll get all the good memories that you deserve the memories that you have for the moment been robbed of. I ended by specifically answering her question. I believe that at present you are emotionally four years old. Im not sure what your mental age is, but you certainly seem smarter than a four year old. And you have the beautiful, strong body of a mature woman. These three things are out of step. Its no wonder youre confused. It would be confusing for anyone. But God wants to heal you so that all of you is the one age with happy memories and no confusion.

Usually, when little alters fear losing their childhood, it indicates that they have not yet received all the fun, love and nurturing that they need. If this need were left unmet, the effect of deprivation during childhood would continue and one would expect the whole person would go through life suffering from unfulfilled emotional needs. If so, the Healing Lord understands and will not let these little alters miss out on what is needed for emotional wholeness. So little alters need not fear. God will not rush things. He will not let them miss out on the nurturing they long for. As I continued to explain to her things mentioned elsewhere in this series of webpages, peace began to settle upon this dear alter. She no longer saw herself as a separate person trapped in someone elses body but as a vital part of one person. Now she saw herself as having been tragically disconnected from the rest of her and that union with her other parts represents true fulfillment and the end of confusion. She was not the freak that she had seen herself as, but simply someone who, through no fault of her own, had been deeply wounded emotionally, and God wanted to heal that wound. Becoming one with her host was not the frightening loss that she feared but the gaining of new memories and abilities. It was discovering that she was a key piece in a jigsaw puzzle that would never make sense without her. It was a healing, a coming home, a restoration, becoming whole. Just a little while later, this alter began finding herself merging with two of her fellow alters whenever they met with Jesus. I asked her what it felt like to be one with the other alters. She replied that it made her feel stronger, more capable and more alive. The experience took nothing from her; it added to her. It enriched her. It is natural for alters to mistakenly suppose that integration would mean they would cease to exist. This is far from the truth. Not only will they never cease to exist, integration means gaining more abilities the abilities of the other alters. There is no loss. It is a win-win. One woman with D.I.D. put it this way: As much as I hate having this disorder I often used to worry about who I would be without it. Through your webpage Ive learned it doesnt have to be that way. I would be more, not less. A woman had many alters who were excitedly discussing forming into groups of two or three and merging with each other. Some, while not committing themselves to permanency, were actually trialing it for a few days at a time. This had come about naturally, without the slightest input from any counselor. Many of them would have loved to merge with their

protector alter whom they greatly admired. The protector refused, fearing that merging would result in gaining each others weaknesses. She worried that gaining any weakness would lower her ability to protect the alters, should that need ever arise. Moreover, she did not want to inflict her own weaknesses upon any other alter. I told her I expected that each would gain the others strengths and that weaknesses would disappear unless all the alters she merged with had the same weakness. At my suggestion she asked God about it. He always comes up with brilliant insights. He replied that it would be best to wait a little while before merging with any other alter and that she should focus first on merging with God. This alter was already a very committed Christian but at times was a little tentative in her relationship with God, as is typical of someone whose trust has been seriously violated by humans. Of course, Gods response is very scriptural. For example: 1 Corinthians 6:16-17 . . . For it is said, The two will become one flesh. But he who unites himself with the Lord is one with him in spirit. The alter concluded that by merging with the perfect Lord, her own weaknesses would cease to be an issue.

Bursting Out of Confinement

In Heidelberg Zoo, Germany, a bear was confined in a small cage for years. Every day it would continually pace up and down as far as the cage would permit twelve paces up and twelve paces back. Finally, the bear was released in a large new enclosure, but to everyones dismay, all it would do was walk back and forth, twelve paces up, twelve paces back. Alters are like that. Its not that an alter does not have the skills or memories or emotional ownership of certain events that a fellow alter has. It is simply that such alters are living in denial, or mistakenly think that they are more limited than they really are. They can access all the memories and skills of the full person but they believe themselves incapable of going beyond the narrow confines of who they think they are. They usually see themselves as having no existence before a certain

age, nor beyond a certain age. They need to be freed from the confines that this self-image imposes on them. As alters begin to heal, they will occasionally draw upon memories or skills outside of the age they imagine they are limited to. For example, an alter who thinks she is a child might display maturity or vocabulary or a skill that the person never had at that age. Or an alter might speak of an event that occurred before he was formed as if he personally experienced it. This often happens so naturally that alters are unaware that they are doing it. They can be greatly helped if, when you notice it happening, you gently draw to their attention that what they are saying or doing indicates that they truly are the full person that you have been telling them they are. Since alters exist in an attempt to protect other parts of the person from at least some of the trauma of deeply disturbing experiences, they retain the deepest emotional reaction to experiences. Not surprisingly, they also sometimes seek to protect the rest of the person by keeping unpleasant information to themselves. Although these secrets seemed horrific when the alter formed, the host has since matured physically and probably spiritually, or circumstances may have greatly changed. For any of these reasons, the secrets are likely to be less upsetting to the host than the alter supposes. It is also not uncommon for an alter to be trying desperately to keep a secret without realizing that the host already knows about it. Metaphorically speaking, it was as though artificial roadblocks had been set up in her hosts brain dividing the real person into several alters. Neural pathways from each alter to the thoughts, memories, viewpoints and so on of the rest of the person are all in place and full access can easily be established once each blockage is removed. As an alter stops holding on to secrets and looks to God for healing, the blockage slowly dissolves, thus allowing the alter, simply by thinking, to access memories and skills that the alter hadnt known he/she had. As this begins to happen, the alter becomes increasingly like the whole person, with just a slightly different perspective unique to that alter. Once confidence is gained and an alter reveals his/her secrets to the rest of the person, a significant reason for the alter to exist as a separate entity vanishes. To unite with other alters the alter must also like those alters and (if the alters are older) not be afraid of growing up or losing his/her individuality. The alter is then likely to merge with one or more other alters and the process continue until all the alters have integrated into one person with the full power of all the memories and skills and perspectives of each alter combined. The order in which merging takes place might surprise. For instance, a teenage alter might happen to have

more in common with one in its thirties than one in its twenties and so the teenage alter could merge with the thirties alter, while the alter in its twenties temporarily continues to remain separate. Moreover, it is often a case that opposites attract. Alters with a particular weakness will often team up with those who can compensate. A timid alter might team up with a courageous one; an alter lacking a particular intellectual skill might team up with one that has that skill, and so on. I should point out, however, that it is not uncommon for an alter to remain silent for a while and for the host to misinterpret this silence as indicating that the alter has merged with another.

Helpful Points in Healing

Since most people have more than one alter, each alter needs an individual name to help you identify which alter you are speaking with. Sometimes alters choose for themselves demeaning names, such as Shame or Reject. I never use such names because doing so reinforces a lie they have believed about themselves. In fact, if they let you, consider using an opposite name such as Honor or Beloved. Sometimes alters choose normal but diverse names. Three alters of the one person might be named Jack, Bill and Brian. It might slightly aid their sense of unity, however, if they could be referred to by the age that they formed. For example, if the hosts name is Jack, they might be called three-year-old Jack, six-year-old Jack and twelve-year-old Jack. On the other hand, even referring to them by age could be slightly negative by helping them feel locked into that age. A name can have such a powerful impact upon a person that, in the Bible, peoples names were sometimes chosen by God. Ive seen alters profoundly helped by being given a significant, positive name. So choice of names is worthy of prayer. We all love testimonies of people who, by becoming Christians, undergo dramatic transformations of beliefs and behavior. We have explained, however, that until they are helped, alters are trapped in a time warp, and if the time in which they are trapped is before their hosts conversion, those alters will, as one would expect, be like non-Christians and have not yet experienced any of the spiritual transformations that the host enjoyed later in life. This situation will continue until the alters are specifically taught the gospel message, yield to it, and are trained up in the ways of the Lord. So it is not unusual for a Christian to have an alter

that hates God or has other habits or views that disgust the Christian part of the person. It is hardly surprising that when alters first surface after feeling despised and rejected for years, they are often bitter and unpleasant to talk to, just as almost anyone would be after suffering a tragedy and then cruelly treated, rejected and kept in solitary confinement, year after year. Please dont add to their torment by letting their reaction upset you. Show them kindness and acceptance and minister the love of Christ to them. Alters need to be loved and prayed for and coaxed into the kingdom of God. They need to be taught Christian principles that might now seem so basic to hosts that they have forgotten that they had ever needed to be taught them. Just like anyone else who has had little exposure to Christian teaching, most alters must be taught such basics as the need to forgive those who have hurt them, to renounce sins and any occult links and, once they have yielded to Christ, to learn the authority that they have in him. Each of these is a huge step, so be gentle and patient. If an alters host has already surrendered to Christ, I find it easy to have faith for the alter to likewise yield, but keep remembering that alters are deeply hurting and so deserve great tenderness. Usually the trauma they suffered involved having their trust violated. So trusting anyone God included is highly challenging, possibly even terrifying, for them. Trust takes time to develop. Not only are alters deeply hurting, they almost expect to be rejected and easily misinterpret even harmless remarks as rejection. They might act stony hard but it is simply an attempt to steel themselves against the pain of rejection. Deep down they crave unconditional love and acceptance. If they begin to feel they can find this in you, they will be keen to please, and any trouble they cause will not be due to not wanting to please you, although they might deliberately test you to see if you would reject them, as they fear. So discipline would not increase their motivation. I urge against speaking sternly to alters even to very annoying ones. Dont tell them off like naughty children. Each alter needs and deserves deep respect and lots of unconditional love and patience and gentle persuasion. Being stern with an alter is likely to drive the alter into hiding. If that seems like peace to you, it is a false peace. If you have alters, they are an inseparable part of you. It doesnt take much intelligence to realize that to hurt a part of you is to hurt yourself, and to not coax an alter into the open where he/she can heal, is to cripple yourself.

Youll be astounded at how a few days of compassion and gently explaining the gospel will transform a nasty, God-hating, sin-loving alter into a delightful, God-loving friend and ally who is keen to live a life of purity and to please you and other alters. Sometimes, when you have been ministering for weeks to a person with Dissociative Identity Disorder and yet another alter speaks to you for the first time, the alter has heard much of what you have told other alters. Often, however, the alter has not heard and you have to repeat it all over again to the new alter. This can sometimes be tiresome for the person helping, but it must be done. Often the host and other alters can help the new alter but I have frequently underrated how much Im still needed to repeat what I have already told the persons other alters. Since each alter will behave rather like a normal traumatized person of that age and gender, the more skilled you are at emotionally supporting people, the better you will be at helping alters. For some practical tips in how to emotionally support people who are hurting, see the link at the end of this page, titled How to Comfort the Hurting. It is both very important and healing to parent child alters as you would tenderly parent a normal, deeply hurting, fearful child. This can be particularly challenging if you are inexperienced with children, but most new parents start off inexperienced, too. Buy each young alter his/her own toys. Play them Christian childrens music. Hug them, praise them, tell them you love them. Sometimes even adult alters that seem very tough can desperately need such expressions of parental love and approval. For the sake of baby alters, you might even need to wear diapers, use a pacifier, and drink formula milk from a bottle. An adult man found there were often times when, if he did not do this, he would get so stressed as to fall into sin. But he found using baby items so humiliating that he had to learn over and over just how critical it was for his healing and his own peace. Listen long and hard to each alter. Teach, guide, play with, empathize with and even joke with the alter. If a host finds times for certain alters to manifest themselves freely, they will be more settled at times when the host particularly wants them to be quiet. It is important to know that God is eager to take alters into his temporary, intensely personal care. It is not unusual for the alters of Christians to enjoy times in heaven playing with God or receiving personal instruction or comfort from him. One child alter often played before the throne of God with several other, unrelated child alters, some of whom spoke languages that were foreign to her. One of their favorite games was playing with what seemed to be a harmless ball of fire. An

alter I know once found herself in what seemed like a pleasant and private heavenly hospital ward in which Jesus sat on her bed and personally comforted her. Not surprisingly, such experiences are deeply healing. Encourage alters to feel loved of God and safe with him and to spend much time with him. Wrote one alter in a written prayer: We hide in you. You have a secret place for alters and we know it is a safe place. . . . Daddy, thank you for loving and protecting alters. We would be in deep trouble without you, but we are with you and you love us. It is not uncommon for a host to feel overwhelmed by the incessant demands of several needy alters. Such a person is able to enjoy respite by handing one or more of the alters over to God for a while. With the help of her host, one of Alices younger alters wrote the following to one of Jakes younger alters about the games God plays with her. Do not regard these games as trivial. Imagine how healing bonding to God such experiences would be to a traumatized little girl who is never allowed to play, and for whom touch was usually painful, sexual, or both. God plays lots of games. My favorite is Tickles. I love it when he grabs me and spins me around, smiling and laughing. Then he gently tickles me and kisses my tummy. I squeal in delight. He dances with me too. I love to spin around in his arms and I feel so safe. We sing a lot together. I love to sing. We play hide and seek. He pretends he doesnt see me and I pounce in his lap. Then he grabs me and cuddles with me. Or I call him and he surprises me with where he is. Sometimes he is behind me and that isnt fair cos I dont have eyes in the back of my head. He clowns around and we giggle and giggle. On another occasion, Alice typed as God spoke to her little alter. Heres part of what he said: Sweetie, you are my delight. I love alters. They are special people with special needs. When the world shuts them up I have a place in my heart for them. I love you and the times we play together are more than precious to me.

The Lord is far better at understanding and helping alters and anyone else for that matter than we are. Nevertheless, there is no avoiding it: people (alters included) need people. One host was so frustrated with his child alters that he sent them all off to God, hoping never to see them again. I understand his reaction. It was a huge trial for him. Some of the alters were not toilet trained. One wanted a pacifier and formula milk and couldnt even speak. Imagine a grown man acting that way. In fact, his wife had left him because of it. The Lord made it clear to him, however, that, respite breaks and special healing sessions aside, the man must care for his own alters. Seeing the wisdom of what God had told him, I pointed out to the frustrated host that he would remain fractured and hence below his full, God-given potential while his alters were not with him. God can heal in amazing ways but this man needed to bond with his alters, and they with him, for him to find true wholeness. Like any other human bonding process, spending considerable time with each other is essential. There is much that people can do to help and comfort their own alters. In fact, when coupled with continually seeking divine help, I used to think that healing oneself should be the norm. However, an alter I had helped wrote the following to a man who had alters, and sent me a copy: Alters are lonely people. It is so much better not to suffer alone. I needed to talk to someone outside myself, not merely with the host I split from. I needed a safe place to say some very personal stuff and talk graphically about the things that hurt me. I needed to trust someone and to know that I could be accepted for who I am. For me, Grantley was that someone. This has helped me so much and I am grateful both to God and Grantley for their help. Before reading this I had been vaguely aware of the value of alters talking to people other than those who share their own body. Now that I have stopped to consider it, however, the importance is obvious. Someone in solitary confinement can, of course, talk to himself and God, and doing so would be invaluable. Nevertheless, anyone in this situation will develop a desperate need to talk to other humans. This same alter explained why she would never reveal herself to a professional counselor. An alters most pressing need is for a friend, not a clinical healer or anyone paid to spend time with the alter. If you felt rejected and painfully lonely, would you pay someone by the hour to listen to you? Many of us would find that so hollow and humiliating that we would prefer to remain lonely! This alter believes she is typical of all alters in not wanting someone who, with an air of superiority, looks at her as a patient or a case study. She feels the same way about any dogooder who might treat her as an object of pity or someone to be helped,

rather than as a valued friend. An alters self-esteem is typically so low that it could barely endure such a put down. Alters need and deserve a genuine friend someone who not only gives a listening ear and shares insights but who values their friendship. And this is not hard to do. Im not surprised that someone who has helped large numbers of people with Dissociative Identity Disorder said he has yet to find an alter he didnt like. Of course, many need to be relieved of their pain before they become likeable. Moreover, I have since discovered an alter who would let both a friend and me help him but refused to accept his hosts help. The host had previously despised and rebuked him for years, sometimes regarding the alter as his sinful flesh and sometimes as a demon. Even though the host had now completely changed his attitude, the alter continued to resent him for his past behavior, thus limiting the hosts ability to help the alter. However, I was eventually able to help the alter forgive his host. Another practical difficulty in someone trying to cure themselves without the support of anyone else is that when alters first surface their deep emotional pain tends to overwhelm the rest of the person, making it very hard for the person to think with sufficient clarity to effectively minister to his or her new alter. I mentioned earlier in this series of webpages my friend with D.I.D. who chose a psychologist as a prayer partner. My friend told him that he could not afford a counselor. The psychologist replied, Counseling is sometimes overrated. God is God. Jesus does the healing and it is his choice as to how he heals. The difficulty in relying solely on a friend for help, however, is that the friend would need to be a very special person, led of the Spirit and endowed with wisdom. For at least some basic preparation, both the friend and the person with the alters should, in addition to studying these webpages, read those on the link at the end of this page, titled How to Comfort the Hurting. Whoever alters choose to confide in, it will need to be someone the alters (not just the host) feel relaxed with. I know a host who thinks a certain woman is wonderful but one of her alters cannot tolerate her because the woman reminds her of someone who deeply offended her. It is important that the chosen person believes both in the host and in alters, and is trustworthy, gentle, patient, faithful, unshockable and nonjudgmental. Before sharing with anyone anything about your alters, question them about their understanding and attitudes concerning both demons and alters. Ideally, the person should not only believe in alters but also in

demons, and preferably have had experience in casting out demons and also in differentiating between alters and demons. An alter may feel more trusting of one gender than the other. As the alter heals, however, exposure to an honorable person of the other gender could be healing. It can also be very powerful (sometimes its the ultimate) for an alter to minister to someone elses alter. Being alters, they can really identify with each other and gain acceptance. The ministering alter must, of course, be a strong Christian and able to withstand any insults or seduction that the other alter might try. Such contact should be supervised. Alters even ones formed as adults can be so desperate for an approving mother or father that they would love the counselor or friend to become a substitute mother or father. It ends up being far safer and more healing, however, if Jesus and an alter or the host take on the parenting roles. That way there is availability 24/7 without any danger of abandonment due to the substitute parent burning out or leaving. Moreover, the healing advantages are obvious: the more deeply bonded the person is with Jesus and with every part of himself/herself, the better. One of Jakes alters used to call himself Reject. Despite him not being happy with his new name, we renamed him Beloved. In the following, he is replying to an e-mail from one of Alices alters who, coincidentally, also used to call herself Reject. It highlights several things about alters and the powerful way God ministers to them. Im not hitting any of the other alters anymore. For the last few days I went to porn thinking that it would help me, but Terry [one of the younger brother alters he used to hit] keeps singing praise to God and I can hear him inside. When I go to masturbate he starts crying and praying and I cant continue. I want to be like Terry. I told Jesus to be Lord of my sexuality today and asked him to be my Lord also. Jesus told me, Well done! Terry says that when I do bad things it hurts him, too. He just keeps praying for me and doesnt stop. He is afraid of me. I dont want him to be afraid of me. I dont hate him anymore. He just loves too much. I am afraid to be loved. Thank you for telling me that I am wanted. No one ever wanted me. Thank you for wanting me to live.

Jesus wants me. I am just scared at times of him. He has not hurt me, though. He took me to heaven with him for a little bit. He does love me. I am still confused sometimes, though. I am Beloved of God. I dont want to be Reject ever again. When you sent the e-mail about Jesus blowing his love on me, I felt it blow over my spirit. I dont really understand that, but he does love me. By the way, it is important for anyone with D. I. D. who has the tiniest attraction to porn to place a porn filter on all Internet access. You cannot expect currently unknown alters to have the degree of self-control that you have, nor can you expect little alters to be able to tolerate what you can tolerate. Disregarding this can cause significant setbacks in ones healing. A link at the end of this page provides a list of porn filters. A three-year old child who has been traumatized can be seriously triggered by television programs rated for general viewing. Something as innocuous as falling asleep in front of a T.V. can have most unpleasant consequences. When the host is asleep, little alters are often more active, not less, and the host is unable to monitor what is seen.

Hindrances to Integration
Total healing and full integration might take years but the good news is that throughout your healing journey you will enjoy the benefits of continual improvement. Like a young athlete who will become world champion, you will keep getting better and better even though you cannot expect to reach your peak in just a few months. The first step towards full integration is for alters to reveal themselves. By reading these webpages you have come to understand that each alter needs to feel safe enough to do this and that upon first surfacing, each alter usually has so much pain and sometimes bad habits that the host and already-surfaced alters are reluctant for a new alter to manifest himself/herself. So the surfacing of alters is usually a slow, drawn-out process and yet even then the person usually feels that it is happening too quickly. There are various factors affecting how long it takes for all alters to be identified. An obvious factor is how many alters a person has. People who have suffered long term Satanic Ritual Abuse could have over a hundred.

Even with daily counseling and only thirty alters who get on well with each other, it is likely to take at least a year for all alters to be identified. Moreover, I know of no way of ascertaining that every alter has revealed himself/herself. Often there are alters that no other alter is aware of, and even if an alter knows, he or she might feel obligated not to reveal another alters existence without that alters permission. Thankfully, invaluable moves towards integration will begin long before all alters have appeared. As alters mature, they will become increasing alike and various alters will team up. Beyond the mere surfacing of alters, full integration is also slow. What particularly makes integration a drawn out process is that each alter must want it. Just because certain alters have been conversing with you for months and have undergone significant healing does not mean that they do not have further serious issues that need to be worked through before they are ready to integrate. There are so many potential obstacles to an alter wanting integration. Lets list some of them. * An unwillingness to accept present-day reality The persons real gender, actual age or current marital status are examples of reality than an alter might not be ready to accept. Desperately wanting to keep living in denial would make such an alter recoil from uniting with an alter who accepts reality. * An unwillingness to accept truths known to another alter An alter might, for example, be so desperate to love and respect a certain person (a parent, perhaps) that it refuses to believe another alters experiences that shatter the myth perhaps by proving that the person was an abuser. For such an alter, integration would involve gaining memories that the alter refuses to accept. So the alter will remain separate until it is willing to accept this. * Wanting to monopolize access to a certain skill An alters concern that she might end up ignored or undervalued by other alters could move the alter to keep other alters dependent upon her by monopolizing access to a certain skill or useful memories she has. Integration involves each alter having full access to all memories and skills, and until she feels more secure, such an alter will refuse to let this happen.

* Fear that integration means ceasing to exist I have explained earlier in this series of webpages the benefits to alters of integration. * Maintaining a different sleep schedule from the other alters An alter might prefer to avoid stress by sleeping at times when the rest of the person is interacting with people. Young alters need to play and might be given no opportunity to do so except when everyone else is asleep. Another reason for a different sleep schedule might be that an alter feels it is safest for at least one alter to be on guard at all times against any possible attack. The result is working in shifts with alters, rather than seeking to work in unison. * Going into hiding whenever things get difficult Leaving it to other alters when things get tough will obviously hinder integration. * Not wanting to share another alters beliefs or hopes For example, cultivating hopes and dreams might be important for one alter but might appall another who is terrified of the pain of dashed hopes. * Falsely blaming an alter for past traumas One alter, for example, might believe that another acted inappropriately and so blame the alter for what happened. Such ill-feeling will block integration. * Resentment over genuine offenses An alter might in the past have hit or insulted another alter or have wished an alter were dead. Unless alters forgive each other, they will not merge. * Intolerance of immaturity This can take many forms. For example, when allowed to manifest herself, an alter formed as a baby might need diapers or want to be bottle fed. Older alters could strongly resent this. Or older alters might want to watch movies that would terrify children, or do other things inappropriate for

children and hence upset their own young alters. This will hinder healing and so block the path to integration. * Moral objections An alter might swear, use porn, smoke or do something else that another alter strongly objects to on moral grounds. Until resolved, this will divide alters. * Differing tastes There might be serious disputes over choice of food, clothing, music, use of money, and so on. * A significant person in the alters life might not want integration Alters might resist integration because they fear that a counselor or loved one might like them less after integration. Or the loved one might be consciously sabotaging integration because he or she prefers to relate to someone with alters. The loved one might, for example, be so keen to have children that he or she encourages alters who think they are children to continue to be childish. Alice, whose alters are nearing full integration, writes: One of my alters set some ground rules that we all follow: 1. Do not take out your hurt on other alters. They are hurting too. 2. Do not use force on another alter. Each of us knows what it is to be manipulated and treated roughly, so we do not perpetuate this by treating others badly. 3. Do not make fun of another alter. We all know how hard it is to communicate and how confusing it is when alters first surface. We have all been trapped by isolation and this expresses itself in many forms. Let each alter come to terms with what she is experiencing and to communicate it as best as she can. 4. Above all, never betray an alter. Anything confided to you, including the mere existence of an alter, is a sacred trust that must not be revealed to anyone without the alters full permission.

These rules have helped alters become friends. It starts from the moment any of us become aware of an alter who is new to us. Remembering how lonely and confused we once were, we immediately offer her our friendship and remain faithful and kind to her, no matter how unpleasant she might initially seem. If she hurts us in any way, we refuse to take it personally but compassionately realize it is because she is delirious with pain. We must love as Christ loves, in full faith that such courageous love will slowly melt the heart of a bitter, angry alter; transforming her into a beautiful and precious friend. And on the way to this transformation we teach her our ground rules. Maintaining those ground rules has made us dangerous to hell. United, we fight together as an army against everything that would seek to bring us down. We can read each others minds and function as one, switching around to let some rest or to let each others strengths be used to achieve what is needed. The most critical thing, however, is to be submitted to God in all of this.

When Alters Seem to Have Disappeared or Died

It is common for alters to suddenly vanish, especially after something triggering occurs. In extreme cases, other alters and even the missing alter can mistakenly believe the alter has died. Ill say a little more about dead alters soon but this little section applies to all alters who have gone missing. Even when it is known not to be serious, losing contact with an alter can be quite disconcerting. You might even suddenly find yourself without knowledge or abilities needed to perform key tasks at work or elsewhere. No one can say with certainty when these alters will return but they are sure to do so eventually. Here are some hints that might speed their return: * If an alter who has gone AWOL, has a favorite toy or doll or activity, hold the doll, play the game, listen to the alters favorite music, etc. That can help the alter feel safe and he or she might come out enough for you to talk with the alter, allowing you the opportunity to provide needed reassurance, an update on what has happened since the alter withdrew, etc.

* Even if you are not sure the alter is listening, tell the alter something encouraging several times throughout the day such as, It is safe now (if that is true), I need you, Id love to speak with you, etc. * Another way is to ask alters who are out to see if they can locate the silent alter and pass on a message. * It is good to prepare ahead of time for such emergencies by creating in your imagination a safe place for alters to retreat to when they feel the need to withdraw. This safe place can have a locked door, or whatever, but ensure it has a speaker phone or some means of getting a message through.

Dead Alters
Sometimes alters will be convinced that an alter that was once in their system has died. Often they will be saddened by this and they might even blame themselves for it. The supposed death might have happened years ago and it might have seemed like suicide and/or be precipitated by bad treatment from other alters. What actually happened is that the alter thought to have died went into deep hiding and has not been seen since. If an alter seeks God about the fate of the missing alter it will often be revealed that the alter has been with God ever since the disappearance and is so content that the alter has no desire to return to the stresses of earthly life. This might sound cozy but the practical reality is that some of the persons intellectual capacity (quite possibly including a special talent) and the alters special experiences with God are rendered inaccessible and effectively lost for as long as that alter remains with God (or otherwise hidden). So despite it meaning that the alter must re-enter the harsh realities of everyday living, the alters return is very much in the interest of the rest of the person and of that person achieving the most for God on earth. It is therefore advisable to entice the alter back. Prayer for this will help, as well as passing on messages that the alter is loved and that earthly life is now better than when the alter left. Any alter who treated this alter badly should also apologize.

Feeling Excessive Guilt For Loved Ones

Many alters have spent almost their entire existence selflessly relieving the distress of other parts of them by bearing the distress themselves. They take upon themselves unpleasant memories and/or associated negative emotions such as guilt, shame, blame, regret, sorrow, depression, loneliness, fear, worry, anxiety, anger, self-loathing and feelings of inferiority. This they do to enable other parts, especially the host, to focus on necessary tasks, such as study or work, without the crippling distraction of all these distressing feelings and concerns. Their efforts sometimes even work for physical pain and tiredness. This unique type of help ends up being almost an automatic response, an addiction, and a way of life. Some even see it as their sole reason for existence. This carries over to other relationships so that when they suppose a loved one sometimes even an animal in the external world is suffering, they slip so easily almost unconsciously into attempting to relieve the loved ones suffering by suffering on that persons behalf. None of us can know exactly what a person is feeling. If someone has an open wound, the slightest touch could send him reeling in pain, whereas for other people the same touch might not hurt at all. So alters, having suffered deeply themselves and often having inner wounds that are not yet healed, typically assume that loved ones in the outside world are more sensitive and hurting more than they actually are. This, combined with the expectation that suffering on someones behalf will relieve that persons distress, drives them even more to want to suffer for the loved one. Moreover, there are several factors causing alters and child abuse survivors to have a highly exaggerated sense of responsibility for the welfare of others. All the factors cited above and in the link combine to make it exceedingly difficult for alters to stop their habit of acting like an alter to people in the outside world. Despite the best intentions, however, suffering on behalf of someone who does not share ones body and brain cannot ease that persons distress. So alters who attempt to help in this way are left feeling such failures and so devastatingly guilty that it could even lead to self-harm. Even without Dissociative Identity Disorder, dwelling on guesses about what a loved one might be suffering often ends in needless worry and attempts at empathy that overshoot the mark. Since people with D.I.D.

are even more susceptible to this torturously futile habit, it is helpful for them to be alert to the danger and try to stop themselves or their fellow alters whenever they notice thoughts drifting towards negative guesses as to what their loved ones are feeling. Alters can benefit from continual gentle reminders that their guesses are likely to be wrong and that the more they think about a loved ones suffering the more likely they are to slip into feeling within themselves the very things they mistakenly suppose their loved one is feeling. Help alters understand that trying to ease someones pain by bearing it for the person can never work with people in the outside world and that no rational person would expect them to even try. Alters need repeated reassurance that no-one other than Jesus can be anyone elses alter. Assure them that God has great plans for them and a real purpose, even though it does not include bearing other peoples pain and distress.

Challenges for those with Dissociative Identity Disorder

Eight things anyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder needs constant reassurance about: * Even though the symptoms are disconcerting, you are not going insane. * Like the rest of humanity, alters can have demons but alters themselves are not demons, even though they can display antiChristian beliefs and behavior and some alters can believe they are the opposite sex. * When an alter first reveals himself/herself, unwanted feelings and habits are likely to surface within you that you had thought you had mastered. It can be deeply disturbing both to you and to the other alters. Not surprisingly, it will feel to you as if you are getting worse instead of better. Nevertheless, although it may take a while, each alter will heal and the appearance of a previously unknown alter is a significant step towards peace, joy and fulfillment like you have never before enjoyed.

* We have noted that when one alter finds acceptance, another is likely to think it could be safe enough to make an appearance, and then another alter could be emboldened to appear, and then another . . . So even when a person is experiencing significant healing he/she is seldom able to bask in the benefits before being hit by another challenge. Keep reminding yourself of the progress made and remember that if things were slower, your full healing would be delayed. * Except for sinning, let your alters express themselves as much as possible when alone or with someone who understands alters. This is vital for your healing and should be allowed even to the extent of letting them embarrass you or even use offensive language if they feel the need to express their pain or hostility. * Respect alters. Dont betray their confidence, make decisions without consulting them, and so on. Disregarding this even accidentally is likely to create an enemy within, which will, to say the least, be unpleasant and delay your healing. Writes one of Alices alters to one of Jakes alters, trying to smooth over one such incident: Please dont hate Jake. He is hurting and confused, just as you and I are. * Seek to change alters, not by force or suppression, but by the healing power of ending the alters feeling of isolation and rejection, and tenderly ministering the love of Christ and the power of the Gospel to them. Coax and pray them into the realization that God is always forgiving, never angry or judgmental, towards anyone who lets God into his/her heart. Keep reassuring them that God is on their side and is gentle, understanding and wants to bring comfort and take their pain from them. Continues Alices alter in her e-mail to one of Jakes alters: We arent going to get anywhere if God doesnt help us. He wants to. It is time for us both to yield to God. You can go to God just as you are with all your pain, confusion and frustration. He will sort out all those things that leave us so confused. * Despite initial distress, the surfacing of a new alter will not only ultimately lead to the reduction of inner pain, it can mean access

to exciting abilities that will delight and/or empower you. It is not only older alters who can prove to be of immense importance. For example, one young alter might have far better short-term memory than the host and other alters. Locked within another young alter might be a huge reserve of creativity, causing a person to soar to heights of creativity beyond anything the person could otherwise achieve. Yet another little alter might have spent years being personally nurtured by God and have amazing spiritual insight and intimacy with God. If you have alters, those you least expect to have special ability could end up making invaluable contributions to your well-being. Due to abusive toilet training and other traumas, one woman used to have enormous difficulty going to the bathroom. Every alter seemed to have yet another reason for this being traumatic, and delaying relieving herself would plunge her into crippling pain. Her last alter to surface was formed at the age of six. As is usual for anyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder, the woman was unhappy about discovering yet another alter. She had already had to endure the flashbacks and pain of twenty-eight other alters. After a while, however, she discovered that this alter could use the bathroom painlessly. The other alters then learnt to rely on this alter when needing to relieve themselves, thus freeing them from pain and embarrassing accidents that had plagued them all their life. For a surprising array of reasons, you have cause to welcome the surfacing of alters, no matter how much discomfort they initially bring. * You cannot heal alone. You need people. Do all you can, however, not to put all your dependence upon just one human. Try your hardest to spread this among several people and keep working towards your highest attachment and that of your alters being with God, and that the host and other alters are seen as the primary human providers of comfort, wisdom and support.

Final Remarks
In this article I have drawn almost solely upon my personal experience in helping survivors of child abuse. There are sure to be people better than me in understanding and treating Dissociative Identity Disorder. The one infallible expert, however, is the Lord Jesus Christ, before whom I gladly trash any claim to qualifications or experience. Put no trust in me, but you can truly trust him.

The Next Step

A particularly helpful page to read next is How to Find Every Alter & Get Each Alter to Talk. This will then lead to
another good page for getting started on the healing journey. For help in choosing a counselor, see How to Identify a Good Counselor / Therapist. Tragically, alters are often terrified of their Healer and Best Friend and the safest Person in the universe Jesus. They fear he will act like their abuser did. For help with this, see Fearing Jesus & Healing Sex Abuse Dissociative Identity Disorder. For a full list of important help for D.I.D., see Christian Resources: Index of Help for Dissociative Identity Disorder All are very helpful and quite a few are by alters. For an encouraging webpage about the positive benefits of multiple personalities, see Does Multiple Personality Disorder Create a Superior Brain? For free help in the full recovery of survivors (male and female) of all forms of sexual interference, see Comfort, Understanding and Healing for Abuse Survivors. For general help, see How to Comfort the Hurting.

How to Find Every Alter &

How Get Each Alter to Talk

Help When You Have Little Or No Contact With Certain Alters
This webpage is important to everyone with Dissociative Identity Disorder: from those who are certain they thoroughly know their every alter, right through to those in the frustrating position of being unable to contact any of their alters. This page was originally crafted specifically for those in the latter extreme, so if you currently know none of your alters, this webpage will help change that. My goal, however, is not just to get you started but to help you keep the momentum going. You will spend most of your healing journey knowing some of your alters and needing to know still more. So please do not despise those parts of the webpage especially the early sections that assume you know more than you currently do. Later in the webpage will help you with the basics. From the moment you contact your first alter, however, these sections that currently seem advanced will begin to be relevant. I seek not just to give you some methods and then expect you to mindlessly follow them. I want to empower you with a deep understanding of what makes alters reluctant to reveal themselves so that you will be able to apply your own intelligence and skills to this challenge. Dont Presume to have Discovered All Your Alters It is much harder to find if you dont seek. If you have been on the healing journey for quite some time, a very common reason for not seeking is thinking that you have already discovered your every alter. Once alters start revealing themselves, it is typical for them to appear one after another in fairly quick succession, and then for no more new ones to appear for weeks or months. This pattern is likely to lull you into the presumption that there simply are no more alters. You are quite likely to reach this mistaken conclusion dozens of times before your every alter has revealed himself/herself.

Other than divine revelation, I have no idea how anyone can be sure if every alter has surfaced. Understand How Critical it is to Find Your Every Alter Since one of the biggest hindrances to finding new alters is simply having little desire to find them, lets briefly examine from three different angles what makes finding every alter so vital. 1. The Positive Benefits of Befriending Every Alter If you let them heal, all of your alters, without exception, will end up being amazing friends and confidantes and helpers. They are the key to you finding peace and fulfillment and achievement. Only through helping them will you find the true end to guilt feelings, fear and inner pain. You might long to keep suppressed within you horrific memories and/or awareness of your current emotional reaction (such as fear, pain or shame) associated with those unhealed memories. For as long as a part of you has memories and/or emotional reactions that you have no access to, however, you will be unable to find true peace and healing. Unpleasant feelings will be nagging away at you just below the surface of your consciousness. And, alarmingly, you will be are unable to access significant parts of your brain that store this information. Moreover, if you have an alter you have little interaction with, those parts of your brain that you have lost access to almost certainly hold not just memories and emotions you would rather ignore but invaluable skills and intellectual abilities that will make life easier and more fulfilling than you dare hope. Of course, not everyone has every ability, but people with Dissociative Identity Disorder are likely to feel certain they do not have certain abilities and yet have those very abilities locked away in a part of their brain that is currently controlled by another alter. These abilities could already be quite developed but if not, they can be developed at remarkable speed. I am not sure that you can grasp how passionately I wish I had a fraction of the potential for intellectual development found in people who are beginning to discover their alters. For me to not have Dissociative Identity Disorder but to know so many people who do, is like a starving person who cannot eat, acting as waiter at a feast. I would be out of my skin with excitement if I discovered I had alters. The possibilities are almost limitless and will vary from person to person but the following are some examples that someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder might discover. By connecting with his or her alters, a person might end up with remarkably improved:

* Eyesight * Manual dexterity * Ability to use the non-dominant hand * Surefootedness * Athletic ability * Short-term or long-term memory * Musical ability * Speed reading skills * Creative cooking * Mathematical ability * Direction finding and navigational skills * Ability to thoroughly enjoy marital relations * Grammar and spelling * Creative writing * A flair for public speaking * Sense of humor * Linguistic ability * Artistic ability * Dress sense * Parenting skills * Ability to handle stress * People skills * Freedom from certain phobias * Spiritual abilities such as spiritual warfare

* Intimate experiences with God I have no idea which of the above list will apply to you but there are sure to be at least several. 2. Ending Your Alters Needless Torment For as long as you have one alter who remains hidden from you, part of you is in needless agony, even if you remain unaware of it or have grown so used to it that you cannot imagine the relief of it being over. Continual solitary confinement is a psychologically damaging form of torture and this is just the beginning of what an alter walled up inside you suffers. Alters cut off from your help are needlessly tormented by hopelessness, devastatingly low self-esteem, terror, horrific guilt, inner pain as well as torturously starved of love and approval. Here is not the place to expand on this but an example is an alter terrified that the abuse could recommence at any moment, unaware that so many years have passed that the abuser has not only stopped the abuse, he is dead. Another example is an alter who fled into hiding when it seemed an abuser was about to chop off a vital part of his body. Thereafter, the alter was sure he was shamefully maimed; unaware that the abuser never carried out his threat. Just one more of countless other examples: it is common for alters to blame themselves and be riddled with horrific guilt, knowing nothing of the fact that Christ has totally cleansed her, making her spotlessly pure. Even if in some cases you lack the skills to bring an alter to full healing, you can at least introduce the alter to God (and perhaps a counselor) who can. 3. The Scary Possible Consequences of Not Finding Alters Before mentioning some scary things that might not even apply to you, it is vital that you view them from the reality that if you really have D.I.D., you are already a master survivor who has kept winning against the odds without even the greatly increased resources that will be yours through putting this webpage into practice. People have put you down for most of your life, leaving you with such battered self-esteem that this alone is enough to cause you to woefully underrate how intelligent and capable you really are. This appalling underrating of your capabilities, however, is made many times worse if you are not aware of all the survival stories and abilities of other parts of you.

You have managed to survive devastating crises for years and years with parts of you having to cope, not merely alone, but cut off from even the help, maturity, wisdom, knowledge, abilities and encouragement of the rest of you. You do not have to fear the full truth because it will empower you to pour additional help and resources into parts of you that have already survived. With your help these parts of you will not merely survive but will begin to thrive. No matter what you face in the future, the worst is already behind you because never before have you had such maturity, spiritual resources and the ability to draw upon the skills, knowledge and understanding that have been locked up in other parts of you. No one, no matter how capable, can be sure of making smart and safe decisions without knowing all the relevant facts. Whether you realize it or not, there are facts that will remain hidden from you unless you connect with every alter that is currently hidden inside you. No one knows how vital these facts are to your welfare until all your alters reveal themselves and fully share all they know. I have met many people who have ended up exceedingly sorry they had not tried harder and much earlier to get to know their every alter. They could have been spared much heartache. It is with great reluctance that I alert you to the magnitude of the very real dangers of not connecting with all your alters. You have more than enough stress without me adding to it, but it would be irresponsible of me not to warn you of what could be at stake. Picture several infants and young children who have access to guns they do not know are loaded. You are unable to physically touch the children or the guns. So you cannot prevent them from pointing the guns at family members and strangers and playing with the trigger. All you can do is coax and train them to leave the guns alone. It is no exaggeration to say it is equally as dangerous not to do everything you can to discover and interact with every one of your alters. It is not at all that your alters are evil; they simply lack your understanding. Now that you know this, however, to remain willfully ignorant and not seek out every last one of your alters is irresponsible and would render you accountable for any disasters that result. Alters are ordinary people (frequently little children) cut off from vital information and subjected to mind-numbingly horrific situations. Think of normal little children who have been fed lies and are beside themselves with pain, terror, confusion and hopelessness. These darlings have not only been cut off from almost all that you know about life and God but have been tricked, groomed, manipulated and even brainwashed by someone terrifyingly evil.

Despite having surprisingly good intentions, such confused and traumatized alters could unwittingly cause you enormous distress. A huge range of alarming things could be happening without your knowledge. Here are a few real life examples: * You would never let yourself be driven around town by a five year old and yet an alter with no more ability could end up driving your car in dangerous traffic with your loved ones in it. * You would never let an eight-year-old child have access to your credit card and yet you could have an alter who sees the world as an eight-yearold does and has worked out how to use your credit card. * You could be confidently allowing someone access to you or your children, unaware that another part of you knows for sure that he is a dangerous predator. * It is very common for people with D.I.D. to end up with a reputation for lying because in their ignorance of their alters actions they adamantly deny doing something that other people witnessed them doing. * You might be desperate to break an addiction and have no idea that a part of you has no understanding of the value of quitting and is sabotaging your efforts. Or you could have eating disorders you are unaware of, causing you to whack on weight through binging or to dangerously deplete your body through bulimia. * I have not encountered it in counseling but it seems quite likely that one could end up arrested for shoplifting because of the forgetfulness, ignorance or desperation of an alter. * I have given mild examples. If you are still only moderately motivated to endure whatever it takes to know your alters every secret, see More Serious Consequences of Not Knowing Your Alters. How Easily Despicable Alters Can Change You will lack the motivation to find alters if you fail to understand how easy it is for alters who are currently acting despicably to be transformed into beautiful friends and helpers who make you proud. Alters respond amazingly to unconditional love and approval. They will do almost anything to please you, once they sense that they can find in you the unconditional love they crave. On the other hand, it is virtually impossible to

win over any alter that you continue to hate. Love transforms. Hate and suspicion breeds hate and suspicion. Scripture reminds us that we love only because God first loved us (1 John 4:19). As God transformed us by taking the initiative in loving us while we were sinners, so we must follow his lead in loving alters before they become Christlike. 1 Corinthians 13 says that love believes all things or, as some versions put it, love thinks the best of a person. Once we get to know and understand alters it becomes easy to see them as misguided and by no means irredeemably evil. You will most likely discover an alter for whom this initially seems impossible to believe, so I should provide you with a few examples of what motivates alters. * An alter might cruelly enforce a former abusers rules, such as harshly punishing any alter who reveals details about past abuse. Usually, this is because the alter mistakenly believes the abuser still has full access to you. This misunderstanding leaves the alter terrified that if any part of you breaches the abusers rules, the abuser will do to you worse things than the alter did when he tried to get you to avoid the abusers wrath. * An alter might be filled with hate and anger solely because he or she believes that maintaining this front is the only way to scare off potential abusers and so keep you safe. * It is not uncommon for alters to convince themselves that they are the opposite sex. If you have such alters, it is not because they are homosexual but because they have a desperate need to feel safe and their experience has led them to presume that being the opposite sex will lessen their likelihood of being abused. Once they understand that they can be their real gender and be safe because they are no longer helpless children whom authorities would not believe but are in the strong body of an adult, it becomes easier for them to accept their gender and they will eventually begin to enjoy it. * Without your love and an awareness of Gods love for them, some alters might feel so useless and unwanted that they grow so desperate as to be willing to trade sexual favors for someones shallow pretense of love and approval. Abusers frequently convince their victims that they have no other value and no other chance of love except through sex. Having been repeatedly forced to have sex against their will, it is also not uncommon for alters to try to cope with this almost intolerable situation by doing their utmost to convince themselves that like the sex that they actually despise.

This webpage is not the place to keep piling on more examples but the above should suffice to help you understand why it turns out that alters are not only capable of totally changing, but they are usually eager to do so once they realize that they have been acting under a false presumption. The Story So Far Little children naturally believe whatever older children and especially significant adults in their lives insist is true. Have only highly moral and trustworthy people had access to you during your most vulnerable, impressionable years? Unless you had such a protected life, it is very possible that there are parts of you that you have not yet met who accept as unshakable truth put-downs and dangerous or even perverted lies maliciously fed to you at a time when you lacked the maturity to see through the lies. Through befriending and understanding your alters, even the most confused and brainwashed of them can find peace and change so profoundly as to make you proud. There is no such guarantee, however, for any who are left to flounder without any input from your maturity and insight. No matter how awful facing suppressed memories is, there is always something worse: not facing them. D.I.D. is like curable cancer. Get it treated and you will be fine. Ignore it and you might get away with it for a long while but eventually the consequences of procrastinating will be bitter indeed. An ignored alter, reeling in pain and confusion, could end up causing you to lose your job, sabotage valued relationships, commit adultery, accidentally or deliberately kill you or even murder someone. As I have stressed, certain alters have the potential to act this way, not because they are evil, but simply because, without your help, they are alarmingly confused. Such alters have my full sympathy and understanding. Whether the law or your loved ones would be so understanding, however, is a very different matter. You need to intervene as quickly as possible. Within the same person, and from person to person, alters differ significantly. Not all alters be will so potentially dangerous if kept cut off from you, but until discovering each one, you will never know how suicidal and misguided a lost part of you is. Like cancer, problems do not disappear by pretending or hoping they do not exist. All they do is get more serious and prolong your distress. When ignored, some alters are not only your most valuable neglected assets, they are a ticking time bomb that could blow your world apart. By connecting with them you will end up rendering them not only safe but a beautiful source of comfort and support to you and an astounding intellectual, spiritual, social and emotional boost. God is eager to restore every part of you to sweetness and innocence. Nevertheless, the Almighty, being the extreme opposite of an abuser, will not

force himself on any part of you. Out of the infinite integrity of his heart, he will keep restraining his yearning to intervene until that part of you willingly gives him permission. Helping an alter reach that point of trusting God is likely to require your cooperation. Dont Leave it to a Counselor Some counselors refuse to converse with alters and focus exclusively on the host. Having spoken to many alters who feel deeply hurt by this approach, I dont recommend it. This approach to counseling usually leaves alters feeling ignored, rejected, unimportant, and sometimes even less than human. Abuse typically creates these same feelings, so the last thing you need is for a counselor to unwittingly add to this deep wounding. On the other hand, if you or your partner were undergoing marriage counseling, it would be total failure if your partner fell in love with the counselor or ended up ignoring you and sharing exclusively with the counselor. Likewise, you do not want your alters to prefer speaking to a counselor rather than with you. Lets put it another way: alters are a vital part of you. They hold the key to your past and to you achieving your full intellectual, emotional, vocational and spiritual potential. If a spinal cord injury caused a part of you your legs to no longer respond to messages from your brain, healing is not about a therapist learning how to get that part of you to respond to messages from his brain. They are your legs and healing hinges on you learning how to walk with them. So it is with your alters. Sometimes a counselor might initiate contact with an alter but you need to strive to catch up and become your alters best friend and confidante. Whether you connect with your alters is largely up to you, not your counselor. You can, however, ask your counselor to help you by encouraging your alters to feel positively about you and by keeping you informed about your alters, as much as your alters will allow. Why Alters Hide from You To learn how to help your alters feel secure in revealing themselves and their secrets to you, it is vital to understand the many valid reasons for their reluctance to do so. We will later uncover things that could hinder alters from speaking to anyone but first we will examine how you might have unknowingly scared, traumatized or hurt some of your alters, causing them to fear or despise you or be infuriated with you, even more than with a kind stranger.

Regardless of whether they have Dissociative Identity Disorder, it is normal for people to engage in self-talk, and for anyone with low self-esteem or low tolerance of imperfection, self-talk can get quite ugly. Often we would not speak to anyone else as abusively as we speak to ourselves when frustrated. For example, if we make a mistake we might get angry and blast ourselves with the words, You idiot! Or if we get emotional or feel insecure or feel the urge to do something that is more common for little children, we might angrily tell ourselves, Stop being a baby! An alter is likely to assume you are speaking directly to him/her when you say such things, especially as it could well be that alter who made the mistake or felt scared or had a deep need for the comfort of a teddy bear or even a pacifier or something else that adults denigrate as babyish. Here are some additional common examples of reasons why, without you realizing it, an alter might feel scared of you or resent you: * An alter might have bravely and very tentatively shared a memory or deep secret with you and you rejected it as stupid or false or blabbed it to someone the alter fears is untrustworthy. (Abusers typically terrify alters with horrific threats as to what would happen if ever they told anyone about the abuse. Adults might see through the threats, but not little children.) * You might feel you are being godly by getting angry with yourself for having the urge to engage in a habit you regard as wrong. Quite likely, however, what is sabotaging your efforts and so feels the force of your anger could be an alter who lacks your understanding that it is wrong or who lacks your spiritual resources to resist temptation. * An alter might feel terrified of something because it is linked, in your alters memory, with an horrific event. Being unaware of the full extent of this, you might make yourself and your alter do it. Forcing this upon your alter can feel as abusive to the alter as forcing someones head under the water until he nearly drowns. Sometimes an alters fear was not just valid in the past but is based on genuine danger even today. For example, you could be letting someone have access to you or your children without realizing that one of the things suppressed from your memory is that he has already proved himself to be highly dangerous. * You might have unknowingly made decisions that have endangered, physically hurt or traumatized alters. I will provide just three of many possibilities. 1. Many abuse survivors occasionally view or deliberately fantasize about pornographic material, hoping it will help desensitize them and mistakenly thinking it might contribute to

healing; not realizing that it is traumatizing certain alters who, more than is realized, are carrying the pain of past abuse. 2. Your alters might have protected you from knowing that a relative you like has molested you at every opportunity he/she has had. Dismissing your inner qualms are ridiculous, you decide to visit your relatives or let them visit you, spending a couple of nights in the same house as this offender. You lose consciousness as soon as the offender approaches you and another alter perhaps several alters during the course of the assault is forced to take over and endure the agony. 3. You might have initiated a friendship with someone, not understanding the horrors that would follow, nor even now knowing the extent of what happened. Heres one of countless scenarios. You might have been seduced as a little child and come to enjoy it because it was never violent and, though by no means love, it was the closest imitation you were able to get. This abuser moves on and in your continued craving for love you eagerly approach another abuser, expecting gentleness but it turns out he is violent. You quickly escape by forming another alter who is forced to endure it while you remain oblivious to the torment that followed. * At times you might even get so frustrated and hateful towards yourself that you engage in self-harm inflicting pain and wounding the body you share with your alters. * Sometime in the past you might have sunk even to the ultimate insult of mistaking the already highly traumatized alter for a demon. How would you feel about someone who claims to be morally superior and concludes you are not only eternally dammed and unredeemably evil but considers you to be so disgusting that he genuinely believes you are not even human but some form of hideous lowlife? So there is a vast range of possible reasons for an alter regarding you as untrustworthy or even as an abuser. It is normal for all of us not just for alters to shrink from anyone who gets angry or harsh towards us. Unlike most people, however, alters have already been deeply traumatized, which puts them on hyper-alert for anyone else who might possibly hurt them. When treated as a useless annoyance or as an enemy, alters can be expected to feel deeply hurt and rejected and want nothing to do with you. Before some alters would even consider sharing their hearts with you, you would have to do much to convince them you have changed and to overcome the resentment they feel towards you.

Perhaps even now you fear, despise or even hate certain alters. I have several webpages to help you sympathetically understand and be a catalyst in the transformation of alters who are initially angry, hateful, dangerous, lustful, perverted and/or anti-God. Some of these pages are listed at the end of this webpage The Other Factor Yet another reason for alters clamming up is that many alters can feel that it is their life-long duty to care for you by keeping information from you. They will need to know that you are now strong enough to face the truth and that you are eager to do so. The truth will set us free, and ignorance can have terrifying implications, but many of us still fear the truth. Yes, the truth might initially hurt but, like going to a dentist, the alternative will end up being far more painful. To quote what I wrote elsewhere: Living in denial can never change reality. Not even embracing the truth can change the past, but it empowers us to change our future reality and find true healing. Here is some encouragement: a part of you already knows the truth and has coped it with it ever since the event happened, without even having the maturity, spiritual resources and human support that you have. How to Win Alters Over We will soon discuss how to detect hints as to when an alter could be more likely to be able to hear you. Having just mentioned some of the fears and resentments that alters might have towards you, however, makes this the appropriate place to mention how these barriers might be overcome. Thankfully, although it can be challenging, you have something huge in your favor: underneath all the hurt and suspicion, your alters are still desperate for your genuine love and approval. Here are some suggestions as to what to tell alters, even if you are not sure they are able to hear you: * You are more important to me than I ever realized. I should have valued you, listened to you and been a good friend to you. If I have ignored you or done anything to hurt you or annoy you, I was wrong and I want to do everything I can to put it right. Please tell me what I can do to make it up to you.

* I am grateful to you and forever indebted to you for all the times you spared me pain and distress by bearing it for me. From now on, I want to do all I can to help you bear this pain and find full healing from it. * What can I do to help you feel safer and more cared for? * If you would like me to hug you or listen to you, I would love to do so. [To hug an alter, regard your alter as a full person with a body, and vividly image yourself hugging him/her. Try to both see and feel this in your mind.] * Is there something affordable I can buy you? Alters desperately need unconditional love and tenderness, patience, kindness and encouragement. They need to feel valued and believed and liked. You cannot expect them to share with you if they feel unable to trust you to respect their confidentiality or cannot trust you to handle upsetting information without you either freaking out or thinking they are liars or stupid. The Power of Being Kind to Every Alter You Discover It can be hard to get the ball rolling but once you start befriending one alter, it will get easier and easier for others to connect with you. When other alters who have remained hidden see you believing, encouraging and building up an alter, it will help them believe it is now safe to reveal themselves to you. As they slowly become aware that you have warmly accepted, befriended, believed and supported another of your alters they will gradually begin to think that it could be safe and/or advantageous for them to likewise reveal themselves to you. So once there is a breakthrough with one alter, it will be a little easier for a second alter to follow, easier still for a third, and so on. Moreover, alters you have befriended might not only put in a good word for you but might even introduce you to some other alters. For each alter you discover, find out his/her favorite food, music, color, clothes, activities, books and so on. Providing these things, plus daily talking with each alter and building up each ones self-esteem can be most helpful in enticing alters to stay out or come out again after going back into hiding. The more often alters are out, the stronger and more healed they will get, the bigger help they will become to you and the more likely it is that other alters will be encouraged to reveal themselves to you. In the early stages it will feel as if you could not cope with more alters but as you build up those alters you know, they can be inspired to greatly ease your workload by comforting, supporting and training other alters. Just as babies start off being a huge drain to parents but can grow up to be an invaluable support, so it is with alters, only the transformation can be much

quicker. Far more than you currently realize, you need for your alters to reach their amazing potential. This cannot happen if they spend most of their time suppressed or in hiding. Your alters healing and remaining out is critical to your wellbeing, so keep encouraging them and assuring them that you want and need them. One of my friends who is healing from Dissociative Identity Disorder writes: We try to make sure every alter is able to get the time to do what he/she would like to do, both in processing things [mentally coming to terms with new information] and in fun. This often means making schedules and arrangements. When two of us like the same activity we can share it, which leaves more time for one who needs a more solitary activity. We are not always good at this but we try. It being counterproductive for an alter to go back into long-term hiding is one of several reasons why it is beneficial to create in your powerful imagination several large, beautiful areas, each of which is securely sealed off, preventing everyone else from entering. The only entrance to each sealed off area is an impenetrable door that can be solidly bolted from the inside. On the outside of the door is a Vacant sign that immediately changes to say Occupied when it is bolted and at the same time the name of the occupant appears on the door. Anyone inside is to be left alone. Next to the door, however, is an intercom that is heard throughout the sealed-off area and cannot be switched off. If it is deemed important, a person can speak on the intercom or leave a message for the alter inside but it must be very short. The message may be longer only if the alter in hiding is happy for the conversation to continue. Even God agrees never to enter without first using the intercom and being allowed in by the alter, and he will leave again whenever the alter tells him to. There are various unpredictable events where the intercom could prove quite important. One is a need to tell the alter if outside circumstances have changed so much that he/she can now feel safe to come out. Another is to give reassurance and encouragement to the alter. Yet another is if alters left to carry on without this alter desperately need certain information known only to the alter who is hiding. Merely knowing where an alter is hiding can help calm alters who are left to cope. Believe What Alters Reveal Often a key factor in the formation of alters is that the person received no support because no one would believe the very real danger he/she was in. So not being believed is most likely already a sore point with many of your alters. Please dont add to it by not believing them. Also, them telling you probably took a lot of courage on their behalf. You need to make them feel it was well worth them taking the risk in sharing with you.

Alters were formed to keep from you and even each other upsetting information. Especially if you are the host, you are likely to have been deliberately kept in the dark to allow you to function in everyday life without having to cope with awareness of devastating events. For example, it is very common for some alters to be kept unaware of cruel things done by a loved one. It is quite likely that alters have been so good at keeping information from you all these years that when they eventually begin to spill the beans, what they share will seem unbelievable to you. Believe your alters, but be aware that, especially in traumatic circumstances, a person can switch rapidly from one alter to another and then another, thus preventing any single alter from knowing everything about that event unless all alters involved were to share all that they know. So even for events that an alter knows a lot about, both you and the alter might lack certain critical details and be almost unknowingly relying on guesswork or presumptions to fill in the gaps. Each alter is a vital part of the jigsaw but none, including yourself, has all the pieces until every alter has shared everything. This makes it is important not to jump to conclusions. For example, you might see in a flashback part of a person but not enough for certain identification, Avoid presumptions as to the persons identity, even though it might look rather like someone you know or as far as you know only one person had access to you at that time. Another important thing to be mindful of is that abusers often deliberately feed their victims false information and some use horrific tricks to traumatize them into submission. For instance, they might make a victim eat animal parts, claiming them to be human. Some abusers are skilled at using conjuring tricks (it is especially easy to convince a young, highly traumatized child). They might, for example, get a sadistic accomplice to pretend to be Jesus or fool a child into believing the child killed someone. Name Your Alters as Soon as You Can Nowadays, whenever a new species of plant or animal is found, it is usually not something that has never been seen before, but it looks so much like another species that it had never previously been distinguished from that species. Likewise, you need to know each of your alters well, or you could miss the fact that you are talking to an alter you have never previously met. As much as they will allow, learn the name of each alter, or name them yourself. Regularly asking which alter is talking will give the alter the opportunity to indicate that he/she is not an alter you have previously met. Take a roll call, suggests a friend who has so far discovered several alters, and ask if anyone else is there.

More than this, however, when you have found more than one alter, continually checking the identity of the alter you are speaking with (if there is the slightest doubt) will help you keep building as clear and detailed a picture as possible of each alters character. This detailed understanding of each alter will help you avoid confusing an alter that is new to you with one you already know. What makes this important is that sometimes, out of shyness, newly surfaced alters pretend to be another alter. So be on the alert for alters who seem to be acting out of character. You are likely to be surprised at how you come to expect different levels of maturity, knowledge and so on from different alters. If you mistake one alter for another you could hurt that alters feelings by expecting too much from him or her. Ideally, keep a record of every alter and jot down details about each of them. Even if you are sure you will remember all of this, something unforeseen could happen that causes you to go into hiding and another alter who lacks this information would, at least temporarily be forced to replace you. Practical Communication Issues You might be asleep or lose awareness of everything whenever a certain alter takes over. Likewise, the alter might usually be unconscious when you are conscious. In such circumstances, speaking directly with the alter is not an option but you can leave each other written notes. You might, for example, leave notes around saying something like this: You have multiple personalities. This is nothing to be afraid of. It is just how we survive at present. I am a part of you and I would like to speak with you. If you leave a note on this page I will reply. If you do this, maintain the habit of checking the notes every day, or the alter could reply and give up looking for your response. An alternative is to leave verbal messages using a recording devise. You might need to leave simple instructions as to how to operate the devise. If real time, non-written communication is possible, speaking in your mind or even vividly picturing something (such as imagining yourself hugging an alter) might work. When convenient, however, it is often clearer and more effective to speak out loud to your alters. If, for example, people who might not understand D.I.D. are in the next room, use an audible whisper. How do I know when an alter is speaking? Is there a difference between when an alter is speaking and my own thoughts? asked someone desperate to learn.

I replied, Especially in the early stages it is likely to seem very vague. If you think there is a slight chance that you could be hearing from an alter, proceed as if you really are. If it truly is an alter, it might take days or even weeks and you are likely to often be tempted to doubt, but you will gradually receive more and more confirmation as to whether what you think might be an alter really is one. I feel silly. It seems as if I am just talking with myself, she said. I wont always know whether they are hearing you or not, I replied. Whether certain alters are likely to be active or not depends not only on the time of day but on circumstances. For example, certain alters might help you when you are at work, others when you are parenting, others might be more likely to be present when you are relaxing and still others when you are feeling scared or upset. And sometimes alters who are usually out can get freaked by something and go into hiding.

Ways of Discovering New Alters

Tune in to Your Feelings If you are feeling anything that seems peculiar because it does not line up with your current circumstances or thoughts, it could be because an alter is active. It might be fear, sadness, hopelessness, anger, self-hate, isolation, loneliness, bitterness, frustration, excitement, wonder, or whatever but if, under the circumstances, it seems at odds with what you would expect, the feeling could be washing over you from an alter. I can only provide a few examples from a vast range of other possible clues to the unannounced presence of an alter. You are unlikely to experience more than one or two of them. Just remain alert for such things. You might suddenly feel out of place. You might feel small, or everything around you might seem unfamiliar. You might even get lost for no obvious reason. You might feel disconnected from yourself or even hardly recognize yourself in the mirror. You might even find yourself unable to walk, or unable to control bodily functions, or crave a pacifier or a toy or something else inappropriate for adults, or simply desire something that you usually have little or no desire for. Or you might feel ill at ease about something that would not normally bother you. It is important not to get impatient with yourself or to tell yourself you are stupid for having such a feeling. Instead, if anything like this happens, it is an

ideal time to try to make contact with an alter. Proceed on the assumption that what you are feeling is emanating from an alter who is currently close to the surface and able to hear you. If you happen to be writing at the time, then write to the alter. Otherwise, tenderly and reassuringly speak to the alter out loud if circumstances permit using the feeling as a guide to what the alter most needs to hear. For example, if you are safe but feel timid or fearful, say such things as, Its okay, dear one, you are safe now. The scary things have come to an end. How can I help you feel safe? Can you tell me a little about why you are afraid? Using words that little children can understand could be helpful in case the alter only has a childs vocabulary. If the feeling you are picking up is one of confusion or of being small, it could be because the alter has been inside for years longer than he/she realizes and present-day reality is very different to what the alter expects. Say such things as, Its okay, you have just been asleep for years but you are safe. Things are different because life is much better than it used to be. Would you let me be your friend? Even if you receive no reply, continue to softly chat for a while. If you receive no response and the feeling that made you wonder if an alter were present suddenly goes, it could be that the alter has fled back into hiding and will come out again a little later. Note Your Inner Talk A friend who has Dissociative Identity Disorder gives this suggestion for becoming aware of alters: Pay special, sensitive attention to things you might have thought were just ordinary. When I sensed a baby crying in the back of my mind, for example, I thought I was just tired. Or when I heard a little song repeating itself in my thoughts, like something a child would sing, I again thought at first that it was just normal background noise. You might occasionally hear a sentence or two spoken in your mind that seems out of place. For example, you might be feeling content and suddenly hear in your mind, I wish I were dead. You might not be surprised by such events. After all, if you have D.I.D. you have lived with alters for most of your life, even if you have dismissed them. From now on, however, be on the alert for any such times and treat them as opportunities to attempt contact with alters. The Surprising Power of Journaling Journaling is an excellent way to make contact with alters and to come to grips with deep issues in ones life. This journal is private and God loves honesty. He is not afraid of truth or surprised about your deepest doubts and concerns. So

let go of inhibitions and pour out your heart your feelings, your fears, frustrations, childhood memories, how you feel about family members, and so on. Dont evaluate its accuracy or in any way analyze it you can do that another time. For now, just let it flow. As already mentioned, different alters are likely to be active at different times of the day and can be triggered by different events into hiding or becoming active. To make the most of this, try to journal at various times of the day and night and maintain this practice over a long period, preferably indefinitely. Every now and then, read back through all you have written. Some entries might be in a different handwriting style or use different (often more child-like) spelling and grammar to what you would normally use, or the content might surprise you. It might take months for anything significant to appear. Try to make a copy of what you journal and store the copy elsewhere because it is quite possible that at some point an alter might destroy it in a cleaning spree or a moment of panic. Possibilities for creating a copy include photocopying, scanning or typing it into a computer and putting a copy on a USB (thumb) drive. Retain copies of such things as emails that you send and treat them as additional sources of information. If you already have writings from the past even if it is just such things as old e-mails to friends or counselors treasure them. They can end up being valuable sources of information. Even if you get no response, try discussing their content with alters. Another friend of mine with Dissociative Identity Disorder shares this thought: We offer a drawing pad/journal/notebook to alters that they can keep private from the rest of us if they wish. We have a basket of our journals. Sometimes we share but we never read without permission. Often the alters who had been asleep for years journal a lot privately for the first bit before they start really sharing with us in other ways. Its kind of like learning you can trust the others by making sure they keep their promises in not reading what you write. Dont Waste Dreams and Flashbacks Dreams and flashbacks can be exceedingly unpleasant, so dont waste them. They contain valuable information, so record them. The obvious place for this is in your journal. Writing them out and thinking about them when relaxed and fully conscious can help remove some of their terror (which might possibly be beneficial, should the dream recur). The practice also provides a good opportunity to ask alters about the dream or flashback what does it mean to them, how do they feel about it, and so on.

Dreams can sometimes be like flashbacks accurate memories of past events that you may or may not be aware happened. Alternatively, some dreams are the mind trying to come to terms with things that have been bothering you. Sometimes you were not even conscious that these matters were bothering you. Both of these types of dreams can be valuable in giving you insight into what some of your alters might be coping with. However, some dreams can actually be alters seeking to communicate with you, either by symbolically revealing how they feel or by sharing accurate memories. Additionally, some dreams are alters trying to come to terms with things by imaging themselves in various scenarios. Dont Underestimate Art Although you might not feel artistic or even like art, most children like expressing themselves through art and so it could be a way of enticing quite young parts of you to express themselves (and so begin to communicate), especially as deep feelings can be impossible to put into words. Dont forget that art can include collage, montage, using such mediums as Playdough (Play-Doh). Be cautious about using paint, however. Some alters find the fluidity of pain frustrating or even triggering. Try visually expressing feelings, as well as portraits, self-portraits, and anything else that you feel the urge to portray. I encourage you to sometimes try art as therapy and a means to contact your alters. This will probably involve a different approach to art than you usually do. In this case, say out loud at the beginning and several times during the session, something along the lines of, This is your turn to paint [or draw or whatever], and to have fun or express deep feelings and I promise to try hard not criticize or interfere. Then keep letting the artistic expression flow. Dont worry if you think it looks hideous, childish, weird, dark or whatever. Dont judge it negatively, or try to correct or improve it. Just let it flow, saying out loud encouraging things about the art like, Good! Even if it seems you are just talking to yourself, towards the end of an art session or at the end (but before that part of you leaves), speak to the part out loud, saying such things as, What feelings are you expressing through this art? Is there an event in your past that moved you to express yourself this way? What does this artwork mean? And so on. Even if it is vague, take great note of what response comes to you (it might be good to write it down or audio record it for future reference) and dialog with the part of you that is revealing these things, coaxing that part to tell you more. Dont comment negatively or say such things as, That cant be true. Instead, listen carefully and express empathy and offer comfort and encouragement. It has been suggested that talking when being artistic should be minimized as it can interfere with the creative process. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that by striving for perfection or getting impatient with yourself in earlier attempts at art, you unknowingly pushed aside an alter, hurting his or her feelings and

making the alter reluctant to try again. This makes it necessary to reassure alters that nothing like that will happen this time. How much approval and convincing is needed will vary from alter to alter. Try Poetry, Even if You Hate It You might hate poetry or be convinced you cannot write it but that might not apply to another part of you. In fact, the very attempt might encourage that part to take over during the writing session. Buy Toys Etc. If you feel yourself drawn to an affordable toy or game or something else that would normally be out of character for you, buy it and, when you feel the desire, play with it or use it. Use Reminders from Your Past Seek out things that remind you of various stages of your past photos, school year books, mementos, music, old movies or television series (including those for children), Facebook pages of people you have lost contact with, and so on. Other possibilities include following an old family tradition, seeking out old familiar smells (perhaps pine, bacon, cinnamon, aftershave, and so on) or cooking with a family recipe. Such things could elicit a response from alters. If you are really desperate for a reaction you might actually visit areas where you once lived, make contact with people you knew at those times, and so on. I dont recommend it, however. It could provoke extreme reactions from alters. You have Dissociative Identity Disorder only because you have suffered horrific things. You might expose yourself to predators you have always mistakenly thought were safe, and a highly vulnerable part of you might take over to protect you an alter who feels too little to resist the predators advances. Use Your Non-Dominant Hand From time to time, try such things as writing, art work, playing sport or manual work, using the hand you do not normally use for that task. This might possibly entice out another alter, as some alters might be better at using that hand than you are or, even if they are not, your attempts at using that hand might be no better than that of a young alter. After using that hand for a while, talk out loud to yourself in the hope that an alter might hear and respond. Make Full Use of Inside Information

If you have reached the point where you are friends with some alters, make full use of this advantage by asking them to search for more alters and, with the new alters permission, to tell you about him or her. If they discover any alter s, ask them to put in a good word for you

Reasons for Alters Being Silent

We previously mentioned why alters might have personal issues with you. That is obviously important because you can adjust your behavior, but now we will discuss why various alters might not want to speak with anyone. Alters Threatened into Silence Neither I, nor my friend, had the slightest idea that one of her young alters had been tricked into being utterly convinced by her abuser that he had placed a demon inside her who would kill her the instant she revealed herself to anyone. Thankfully, quite out of the blue, this alter suddenly spoke to me. It turned out that she had heard me speaking kindly to other alters and she grew to like me so much and became so desperate to break her own isolation that she decided to speak to me even though she was certain that the very act would kill her. Naturally, that touched me deeply. There can be cases where real demons can be involved and, of course, they need to be cast out before certain alters feel able to communicate, while being extremely careful not to confuse a very angry, misguided alter for a demon. There might be no hint that alters terrified into silence exist and they might never think it worth getting a few words out before what they believe will be certain death (or torture, or the death or torture of a loved one). It would therefore seem wise to occasionally speak to any alters who might be listening (even though you are totally unaware of any), reassuring them that it is safe for them to speak with you and that any threats they might have been told about the dire consequences of speaking with you are nothing but cruel deceit. Since one never knows at what time of day or on what occasion such an alter might be listening, this would best be done on a number of random times and occasions. Baby Alters Too Young to Speak Mothers speak to their babies because this is how babies eventually learn how to speak, and because babies and people learning a new language are able to understand more than they can speak. Mothers also communicate through

touch, body language and through guessing the babies needs and meeting them. Do likewise with any baby alters who are too young to speak. Like many alters who for various reasons do not speak, baby alters are likely to communicate through giving you feelings or flashes of their visual memory. The baby might cry a lot but eventually it will respond to your soothing attention and will begin to speak. The process of learning to speak might be much quicker than for a normal baby because this ability is stored in your brain that the baby shares. All that is required is for the baby to learn how to access this part of your brain. Other Alters Unable to Speak Some alters, even though formed at an age when other parts could speak, might have never spoken in their lives. They could take a while before they learn how to speak or gain the confidence to do so. Communicate with them as you would baby alters. Try to guess their fears and concerns and give them much reassurance and keep chatting to them about yourself, even if they dont reply. Sometimes such alters communicate by thought to another alter who then acts as the alters spokesperson until the alter is ready to speak for himself/herself. Alters Who Cannot Understand Your Language If you only learned at the age of five the language you now use and prior to that you knew another language, an alter formed before that age is likely to not understand you or be able to communicate in your current language. It is not impossible for an alter to know only one language and for you to know only another language. Protector Alters It is not uncommon to have a key alter who not only believes it is dangerous for alters to reveal themselves but actually stops them from doing so. Such an alter might use threats or force or simply convince alters who respect his/her judgment that speaking with anyone is too dangerous. Winning the confidence of this alter and persuading him/her that it is safe for other alters to communicate with you or a counselor will therefore be a significant breakthrough in your quest to communicate with other alters. For a webpage devoted to further help with protector alters, see Protector Alters. Sleeper Alters You could easily have one or more sleeper alters, whose role is to remain inactive (and thus undetectable) unless triggered by certain rare events. An example is an alter created for the purpose of committing suicide (i.e. killing all

of you) if the alter concludes on the basis of his/her limited perception of events that there is no acceptable alternative. A significant factor in keeping oneself from suicide can be compassion for loved ones (including other alters) hurt by ones death. So this alter could feel duty-bound to have no contact with anyone in order to avoid risking any emotional bond that could hinder his or her resolve to kill the body if circumstances deteriorate. I have not come across it but it is theoretically possible for a sleeper alter to be formed whose mission is to commit murder if ever the alter decides that his or her safety is sufficiently threatened. It is obviously very important to persuade any such alter that there are always better options or at least options more pleasing to God than suicide or murder. The problem, of course, is that if you have such an alter you are likely to be completely unaware of it. It is therefore important to regularly explain to yourself why killing oneself or anyone else is never acceptable. Hopefully, this message will eventually get through to, and begin to convince, any sleeper alters. Here is a suggested plan of action if suicidal thoughts come: 1. Take the matter seriously. Assess how great and immediate the threat is. For example, is it just a feeling or is there a definite plan to commit suicide? 2. Quickly check all the alters to ascertain from which alter the plan is coming. Analyzing what triggered the suicidal feeling can be a clue as to which alter it could be. Speak to the alters until the alter is identified. Then give that alter whatever comfort, support, encouragement, prayer etc. is needed. 3. If your attempts to help the alter are insufficient or the alter cannot be identified you might need to activate the anti-suicide plan. This has four levels, depending on the seriousness of the situation: (1) Break the isolation. Dont be alone, even if it is only going to a store so that you are around people. (2) Call a friend and speak to him/her without mentioning the suicidal thoughts. (3) Tell the friend you are feeling suicidal. (4) Urgently call a counselor or a suicide help line.

Undetected Abusers? Some people do not realize they have alters who are still being controlled by an abuser. Sometimes they have no idea the person is even an abuser. Dont be surprised if alters stay silent while the abuser still has access to them by phone, Internet or in person. Alters who disappear Alters you have known will sometimes disappear. Occasionally, such alters are feared to be dead. In fact, even the alters who disappear can sometimes believe they are dead, and sometimes alters go to be with God to be comforted. However, alters cannot die while the rest of the body is still alive. They are simply out of contact, and you are likely to see them again when they feel that outside circumstances have changed enough for them to feel safe about returning. When an alter is not around for a while it is common for people to mistakenly assume they have merged or integrated with another alter. If this really has happened, then the alter or alters with whom this alter has integrated will be very aware of it. They will feel more empowered because they will have this alters strengths and abilities in addition to their own. What usually happens when an alter disappears, however, is that something the alter found scary or disturbing has caused him/her to panic and flee from contact with the outside world, and sometimes from contact with other alters as well. Alters who are just getting used to being out of hiding are particularly jittery and confused. The slightest thing is likely to send them scurrying into hiding so that they can work though the implications of what they have just learned. Usually they will be back out again fairly soon. For alters who have been out much more, it usually takes something more significant to spook them. It could still be quite harmless but it is something that deeply upsets them, such as something that vividly reminds them of some past terrifying experience. When the alter who vanishes is one who has been out a lot, the loss is likely to be severely felt because that alter could have exclusive access to knowledge and skills that are vital to employment or everyday life. (This is one reason why other alters should ideally be trained up to cover such a loss.) How long the alter will be in hiding is anyones guess. We mentioned earlier the value of creating in ones imagination a safe and private place for alters to retreat to and how this place should be fitted with intercom. We have also mentioned the importance of continually communicating with, nurturing and encouraging alters so that they are less inclined to return to hiding.

Prayer I urge you to pray that God reveal every alter to you in the sequential order and timing that would be best for you. He knows far more about this than you or any counselor.

The Bottom Line

Dissociative Identity Disorder begins as an extreme response to an extreme situation, but it ends up a nightmarish addiction to not facing issues that desperately need facing. It starts off as a child having no choice and ends up a way of life with the potential to ruin your adulthood because even though you now have a choice, acting like the helpless child you once were has become a crippling habit. Put in monetary terms, it is like going into unavoidable debt, hurtling towards financial ruin, and then you finally begin to earn an income and have the potential to end the nightmare but you find yourself continually overwhelmed by devastatingly powerful temptations to block from your consciousness your economic crisis and plummet headlong into disaster by reckless spending. This addiction to living in denial is as cruel as forcibly injecting a child with heroin until living without the drug seems intolerable. Being healed from Dissociative Identity Disorder is so much better that it is worth any cost, but it involves facing memories and issues that will take an iron will to face. No matter how weak and useless your battered self-esteem tricks you into thinking yourself to be, however, with God you can become one of the heroes who heal. Discovering alters is an exciting adventure, with significant challenges but immense rewards. I do not claim to have addressed every possibility but I believe I have provided you with enough to further your healing journey. Moreover, I believe you are now empowered with the understanding of what keeps alters silent so that you can develop your own techniques for furthering your healing.

Related Pages
The next page I recommend is How to Speed Healing of Dissociative Identity Disorder

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