Some abusers organise themselves in groups to abuse children and other adults in a more formally ritualised way. Men and women in these groups can be abusers with both sexes involved in all aspects of...

dislocation.”It’s as if I’m floating above my body, looking down on the unfoldingscene.I am snapped back when he roughly grabs my wrist and takes mypulse. He then shifts his position, directly above me. Awkwardly, hegrasps...

It is necessary to make this point in answer to the `iatrogenic’ theory that the unveiling of repressed memories in MPD sufferers, paranoids and schizophrenics can be created in analysis; a fabrication of the doctor—patient...

The child who attends school does not remember the abuse that happens at home or via the family; those memories are held in another part of the child’s mind. The child does not even remember abuse...

Chronic trauma (according to the meaning I propose) that occurs early in life has profound effects on personality development and can lead to the development of dissociative identity disorder (DID), other dissociative disorders personality disorders,...

like the past” and emergency emotions such as fear, rage, or terror are immediately evoked, which compel impulsive decisions to engage in defensive behaviors (freeze, flight,flight, or collapse). When parts of you are triggered, more...

It’s hard to feel supported when you can’t tell people everything. People haven’t really got a clue what it’s like. It’s hard to trust anyone. It’s hard to believe people won’t let you down. I’m...

It all made sense — terrible sense. The panic she had experienced in the warehouse district because of not knowing what had happened had been superseded at the newsstand by the even greater panic of...

The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.Atrocities, however, refuse to be...

On its own, my internal dissociated part now came to the surface, and I found myself hiding from everyone. I still was not connecting it to the dream I’d had. At one time I had...

get rid” of identities (although it is acceptable to provide strategies for the patient to resist the influence of destructive identities, or to help control the emergence of certain identities at inappropriate circumstances or times).It...

By the time Cheryl Hersha came to the facility, knowledge of multiple personality was so complete that doctors understood how the mind separated into distinct ego states,each unaware of the other. First, the person traumatized...

In 1953, Allen Dulles, then director of the USA Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), named Dr Sidney Gottlieb to direct the CIA’s MKULTRA programme, which included experiments conducted by psychiatrists to create amnesia, new dissociated identities,...

As I feel less overwhelmed, my fear softens and begins to subside. I feel a flicker of hope, then a rolling wave of fiery rage. My body continues to shake and tremble. It is alternately...

Of course, I should have known the kids would pop out in the atmosphere of Roberta’s office. That’s what they do when Alice is under stress. They see a gap in the space-time continuum and...

Having DID is, for many people, a very lonely thing. If this book reaches some people whose experiences resonate with mine and gives them a sense that they aren’t alone, that there is hope, then...

Dissociation, in a general sense, refers to a rigid separation of parts of experiences, including somatic experiences, consciousness, affects, perception, identity, and memory. When there is a structural dissociation, each of the dissociated self-states has...

Alterations in regulation of affect (emotion) and impulse:Almost all People who are seriously traumatized have problems in tolerating and regulating their emotions and surges or impulses. However, those with complex PTSD and dissociative disorders tend...

Just as sometimes I wondered if Grandpa had ever existed, sometimes I wondered if I truly existed myself. As I was running, I could see myself from outside myself: a skinny girl with the flapping...

Shamed and enraged, I sit by the side of the road and cry.Eclipsed by a sense of disgrace, my emotions feel momentarily stifled and disconnected. Instead of anger, I feel dishonored and exposed. I cannot...

Patrice had long since buried the particulars of events so painful that they caused her to resolve only to see good. With such a stance, such as dissociative split, she could walk with evil and...

This new co-consciousness brought me to a state of awareness in which my core personality was directly able to experience “her” personality. Being co-conscious with her, he explained, would stop me from experiencing the feeling...

In my mind, I built stairways. At the end of the stairways, I imagined rooms. These were high, airy places with big windows and a cool breeze moving through. I imagined one room opening brightly...

What does a woman feel when she is hit? My mother slapped me when I was a child – on two occasions, to the point of pure hysteria; I never liked it. Those who are...

But as much as this is a soldier’s reason d’etre, it is not often that you hear a soldier explicitly talk about ‘killing’. The k-word as a verb is instead often disguised and supplanted by...

Escape from reality. In some instances, dissociation induces people to imagine that they have some kind of mastery over intractable environmental difficulties. Dissociation is often implicated in magical thinking or self-induced trance states. This aspect...

How do we find words for describing levels of betrayal and emotional, physical, sexual and spiritual torture that fragment and destroy a child or cast and case traumatic shadows over the whole of adult life?...

When I was cooking I enjoyed a sense of being ‘out’ of myself. The action of dicing vegetables and warming oil made my hands tingle and my thoughts switch to a different hemisphere, right brain...

We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories...

Indeed, she often wondered if she were dead, or dying from the inside out, and that was the root of her calm, the reason she could surrender her character.

Changes in Meaning:Finally, chronically traumatized people lose faith that good things can happen and people can be kind and trustworthy. They feel hopeless, often believing that the future will be as bad as the past,...