Survivors with DID rarely know other people with DID. In recent years a wide variety of administrated websites have become available for those with DID to share their lives. In addition, there are rare DID retreats where one might meet someone else, but for the most part, people with DID journey alone. In my own journey, I found it extremely frustrating to understand whether what I was experiencing was due to the DID or some other physical, mental, or spiritual problem. I knew a few people with DID who seemed to function really well with periodic, sudden crashes, sometimes requiring hospitalization. I knew a few who led lives of hopeless despair for decades, living in desperate states of destitution unable to focus enough to pursue healing therapy. Most people I met were in the middle, being supported by family someway financially and going in and out of therapy as capacity and finances allowed, again for decades. On line forums represented people with capacities all over the map. Lots of despair. Lots of whining. Lots of going in circles with no obvious way out. Despite what some therapists claim in websites and books, so far I’ve not met anyone with DID/SRA who was healed (fully integrated for at least 18 months) as a focused effort over a course of just a few years. One person with “simple” DID whom I know was healed fairly quickly with focused therapy. Obviously, my sample size is small relative to the huge population of those with DID. Given what I’ve experienced, the DID people I’ve met personally through the years, those I’ve helped in the process, and what I’ve read, I thought it might be useful to look at the journey of those healing from DID.
Most people with DID understand that there is a spectrum of dissociative disorders in which the mind suddenly dissociates, i.e. goes into another track unrelated to what the body might be doing. Simple dissociation is as common as daydreaming. In DID the dissociation involves various forms of amnestic barriers so that the dissociated period is kept behind a wall, and the rest of the brain may have minimal or no recollection of what happened during that time. It’s now understood that this barrier is due to irreconcilable conflicts in the mind of the person. A new mental state is formed to separate aspects of an event or series of events so that ultimately the identity and sanity of the original person can remain intact. For DID to form, these irreconcilable conflicts come during childhood, usually very early childhood. Dissociation then becomes the number one mechanism by which the child resolves conflicts as she/he grows up. Furthermore, if there is satanic ritual abuse (SRA) or government mind control (MC) involved (read here), the perpetrators purposefully make and program dissociated personalities, which add to the fragmentation of memory and identity. If you are new to DID and especially to this blog, I strongly suggest that you go back and read the basics on DID/SRA/MC and my nomenclature for parts before continuing.
Childhood trauma of a severe and/or repetitive nature leads to these irreconcilable conflicts and the formation of dissociated personalities/parts. Thus, the severity and frequency of dissociative symptoms correlates with the history and nature of the abuse. I’ve known people with one or two additional personalities who were formed to deal with a very focused period of sexual abuse. These additional personalities only took over executive control in the adult when triggered by a threat they perceived to reflect the conflict they were formed to resolve. Such survivors are usually quite functional as adults. Many have no idea they are DID. Yet when the specific trigger arises, they may lose time and experience other dissociative symptoms such as derealization and depersonalization. If the Presenting Primary is aware of what the conflicts are (often subconsciously), they may skillfully and yet unknowingly avoid all such triggers, leading to a limited but relatively trigger-free existence. At the other extreme of the spectrum are people born into cults or Illuminati bloodlines who are massively split in utero and contain many dozens of Primaries, thousands of Alters, and innumerable fragments. (A fragment is a part that holds a small part of a memory, such as the voice, the pain, the anger, the program, etc. from an event. In healing, fragments can integrate back together to form a composite part with a complete memory, but that part is still extremely limited in what it knows – usually a single event.) At this extreme such individuals usually have a Presenting Primary who can be surprisingly functional, being absolutely dissociated from all other aspects of her/his being inside. Only when the programming begins to fail is there all of the dysfunctional aspects of DID. Of course, in between these two extremes are all the millions of people with DID who have various numbers of parts and various levels of functionality depending upon their degree and integrity of amnesia and/or programming, and whether their Presenting Primary System was made to reflect outside function and denial or to be purposefully dysfunctional, holding many negative emotions. Furthermore, in the complex cases, it seems fairly common for the Primary systems to supersede one another at specific periods of life change or at the pleasure of the programmers. These people may be highly functional in some stages of life and less functional in others, in ways that are hard to comprehend until the programming is unlocked.
When people ask me “What does it feel like to be DID?” or “Is this normal in DID?” I’m usually at a loss to answer, because it depends upon all of the above. There are as many ways to have DID as there are people who have it. Even in rather simple DID systems, a person’s life may be horrific or it may be relative OK. I’ve known people who have a few parts due to incest. Some of these people operate well in their chosen careers and are happily married with children. Their “issues” come up re family and sexuality. They have crises of pain, grief, and sadness. Therefore, aspects of their lives are miserable, and other areas are seemingly OK. This would be no different from a non-DID person also dealing with sexual abuse and/or incest in which dissociation was not the main defense mechanism. Life is OK, but not great, but certain areas are terrible requiring a great deal of support and inner healing. When such people who have repressed or dissociated memories of the abuse discover it, life may be in turmoil for some time. Denial has to be worked through. The deep wounding of their sexuality and even identity may require focused work, but they don’t usually completely fall apart, becoming non-functional, living in another “dimension” (which we’ll talk about at the end), and having no idea who they are or what they are supposed to be doing. Then there are others with fairly simple systems who live constantly in a world of despair. There are often diagnosable psychological disorders such as chronic depression, bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, PTSD, substance abuse, and others. In these cases, the therapy can be focused a lot more on “getting through life”, making working on the irreconcilable conflicts in DID a less up-front issue, especially at the beginning.
My concern is for all the people with DID who are crashing and burning and believe they are going absolutely insane. Age and stress take a huge toll on the dissociated mind. Programming starts to unravel. Physical and mental capacities deteriorate. Suddenly, life is a huge mess. There can be catastrophic breakdowns of complete incapacitation (my story) or repeated breakdowns to a lesser degree and then rallying to some level of functionality, often with no revelation of what’s going on inside. If one is still under the hold of a cult or government agency, there usually are repeated attempts to maintain or fix the programming that’s breaking down. If one is in therapy, it’s the norm for these groups to immediately undo whatever you’ve accomplished for healing in counseling. Either way there are years and years of pain – terrible pain – and confusion about what’s happening to you.
Therapy is a direct affront to all DID systems, whether there is programming or not. ALL people with DID have embedded lies that hide what happened, who did it, and the individual’s real response to the event. The question is not if there are defenses, but how many layers and how sophisticated they are to prevent one from discovering the truth. Whatever causes amnestic barriers to start to fall (aging, stress, counseling) triggers defensive programming. In the most extreme cases, there can be hundreds of programs with thousands of parts involved. There is back up programming. There are repetitive programs that reform a program once it’s broken down or on specific dates/ triggers/ etc. In addition to the programs, with the fall or “leakage” of amnestic barriers the primary system starts to perceive the distress of those inside who hold memories and emotions. Suddenly, there are emotions, words, feelings, physical sensations, voices, or beliefs that pop up with no context. The normal response to all this is a feeling of insanity (independent of insanity programs).
I think in the simplest forms of DID, the sense of insanity comes from not knowing that you’re DID. Once the diagnosis is made and it becomes clear that the odd behaviors are due to “someone else” inside you, there is an immediate clear path to getting better. In the hands of a competent DID counselor who knows the Lord and a willingness to face the past, healing can be accomplished with minimal loss of functionality.
On the other hand, in severely complicated DID/SRA/MC, once there is an attempt to break into the systems and find out what happened, the sense of loss of control, loss of reality, loss of personhood, even loss of sanity is certain. Are some people able to maintain doing their jobs? Sometimes, but rarely. I’ve never seen any statistics on it. Can these cases be healed easily and without severe, agonizing pain? No. I absolutely HATE those who advertise healing DID in X number of years (some say even months – REALLY????). There is no X. It takes what it takes. Healing can be prolonged by many, many factors, complexity of the system only being one of them. Exterior support systems or obstructions are hugely important. Internal desire to be healed is quite variable. What I want to say to those in the process who believe they are in hell on earth, Yes!!!! That’s the path to healing. You went through hell that you dissociated way from consciousness. Now you’re going back to find out what happened and how it made you different from who you were designed to be, while having to face huge opposition internally via blocking programs, punisher systems, suicide programs etc, AND the pain of facing what was done and who did it. Most people whom I know who are DID who ever married are now divorced. They may be single parents or had their children taken. Few have robust support systems. Many still have a cult handler. Often the people around them are not psychologically intact. Most are destitute emotionally and financially. Hell on earth. It’s not a pretty picture. Many DID men are in prison. Many DID women are in psych hospitals. Lots commit suicide. There is HOPE IN JESUS, but this is NOT an easy journey. So I want to bring a reality check to those who have read my earlier blogs. Healing from DID for most is like going to war.
For those who are in the midst of this war, are you insane? No. Is the journey worth the struggle? Absolutely. Is it incredibly painful? Yes, but the alternate choice is to stay where you are. On the other side of a season of great torment and despair is freedom. So let’s talk about some of the extremely difficult aspects of the journey. My purpose in doing this is to show you that you’re not alone. You’re not unique. The path can be incredibly difficult. You are not insane. There is help.
Let me start by saying that if you are still being accessed by your programmers, you’ll have an extremely difficult time getting free. Generally, they undo what you do in counseling very quickly. Leaving the geographic region of your captivity and going into seclusion with a person who can help you can be lifesaving. It takes a concerted effort, often months of hard work, to find the connections that break the access points. If high level Luciferianism is involved, there are also spiritual connections that must be severed. Curses, astral projections, and various spells can wreak havoc with the healing process from afar. A knowledgeable counselor, led by Holy Spirit, can thwart these spiritual assaults. If you’re in the process of healing and months go by where you get a victory and then it’s repeatedly undone, you’re most likely being accessed, physically or spiritually.
Hopeless despair is extremely common in DID. This looks like: Lack of a will to live. Terror that nothing will ever improve. So depressed you can’t even find the strength to kill yourself. Absolute certainty that hell can’t be as bad as this. It’s a feeling of utter devastation, and there is nothing you can do about it. Maybe you believe you’re even dying, and no one can or will help you.
Worthlessness is a related problem. Most parts believe the lie that they are an object of no value. They have been beaten, tortured, raped, emotionally shredded, and now live at the will of the perpetrators. With this lie in place, there is no hope of getting better. There is no will to try to escape. Death seems like the best alternative.
Demonic torment I’ve written a bit about before (see here). Essentially all parts are demonized. I realize that secular psych people are blind to this, but if you’re in the throes of escaping, you know that there are supernatural powers at work. In my work, the proof is that when the demons are bound by a spirit-filled Christian, the pain stops, even if for a short time. Amazing. Try stopping them in the name of Mohammed or Buddha. Nothing happens. They know that Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. If you as a counselor have Jesus IN you, they listen. At some point, if you as a survivor are saved, you can bind your own demons. I admit that it’s difficult. I admit that you’ll have a lot of internal fighting over it at the Alter level. With healing, you get more capacity in the spirit realm, simply because you get less internal interference.
A lot of the insanity comes from the opening of amnestic barriers. Understanding that you are not alone inside is disconcerting. Hearing voices talking is upsetting. Worse are the screams, cries for help, and generalized calls of innumerable Littles who are trapped in horrific circumstances. Some Primary systems seem to track more with the inner conflict. Some are extremely sensitive to the intensity of the emotions of parts inside – especially terror and abandonment. Some have lots of body memories in the sense of physical pain, welts, bruises, etc. that other survivors don’t seem to suffer as much. I think all survivors have all of this to some extent, but as I get to know more survivors well, there is a great deal of variability as to how various primary systems are influenced by exposure to alters who used to be behind barriers.
In general, it seems that the less control a primary system maintains during healing re who has executive function of the body, the more the sense of insanity. As far as I know, there is no way to control this, other than meeting the parts and healing them. Some of the worst aspects of the journey occur when there seems to be no capacity to determine who has executive control. This is an experience I and others call rolodexing, after the old system of keeping addresses. Life spins out of control because no one knows or can regulate who is out. There is zero capacity to function. Current memories aren’t formed. No one is in charge of decision making. It’s total chaos. It feels insane.
Some people think that processing the horrific trauma memories is the worst part. Maybe that’s true. It’s pure hell. But I think equally difficult is the period of getting through all the programming put in place to keep you from getting there. There are many websites that talk extensively about various different types of programming. I recommend survivors and counselors read up on it. For example, Svali has a number of web articles that are well worth reading. My point is that these programs cause true suffering. Common triggers to setting off programs are: to find/uncover an Alter or memory content, to try to get around a higher level of programming, to miss a cult or government meeting, or even to meet with a counselor. Consequences might be: an absolute certainty that you, your family, or your pets are going to die and you can’t do anything about it; repeating songs, images, moving visions, internal screaming, physical pain, vertigo, and other physical, mental, and emotional upheaval that drastically disrupt function; take over by a programmed part that will not let the normal Primary system have executive control again; suicide or extreme self-injury; turning yourself in to the cult in a way that no one else inside observes; showing scenes of extreme torture to insiders so that there is abject terror throughout the system that remains unabated for long periods; opening of demonic portals that cause spikes in mental, physical, and spiritual demonic torment; and a many others.
One thing in all this that is really, really, really hard to believe in the midst of enduring a program is that unless you kill yourself, none of this is likely to be fatal. Yes, cults kill. With modern technology, they don’t even have to be near you to do so. But for the most part, for most survivors, all of this programming is to keep you from finding the truth about what happened and to keep you obedient to the cult. It’s disruptive. It’s horrific. It makes one feel insane. It’s something to endure as you and your counselor, led by Holy Spirit, pick through the internal bombs and trip wires and back ups and repetitions and all the other stuff to find the parts who hold the programs. It’s a really terrible part of the process that starts right at the beginning. It feels intolerable, but most of it is not designed to kill you.
In talking about the tough stuff, it’s important to remember that essentially everyone with DID has PTSD. Therefore, flashbacks can be a serious part of your life. I absolutely hate flashbacks. They are horrific. As one gets more into the healing process, it seems like they get triggered more and more often. Some survivors have them a lot. Some have few. I don’t know why. I can only tell you it’s one more thing to endure.
In spite of all the programming to keep you from getting to a place where you can find your parts and learn what happened, you eventually get there. Therapists find working through memories traumatic. Certainly, it’s traumatic for the survivor. Denial sets in hugely. At times the very sense of your existence and identity are ripped to shreds. How much abreaction work you have to endure depends upon your system. “Being there” in the moment, in the setting, reliving what happened is utterly the most draining, terrifying thing you can do. At times it’s necessary for complete physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual healing. It’s in those places of pain that the Lord comes to renew, redeem, and heal. Demons flee. Bondages are broken. Programs are undone. Parts are glued back together. The Healer Himself is made known as a Manifest Presence to those who suffer. This is the essential core of all healing, but it comes at a price. It is beyond exhausting and for a time normal functioning goes out the window. That time may be weeks, months, or years – sometimes many years.
Now let me get back to the issue of “dimensions”. We all understand that there are the four dimensions of time and space. It’s the box we’re placed in when we come to earth. However, there exist many other dimensions that are for the most part inexplicable, because we have no grid for understanding them. We exist as spirit beings, and therefore we have the capacity to experience spiritual dimensions. That’s true for good spiritual places and bad spiritual places. Those with an SRA background have no doubt had experiences with bad spiritual dimensions. One of the worst places that SRA survivors fairly commonly experience is called in the Bible “outer darkness”. I don’t know what this is theologically. I’ve been there – A LOT. It’s a place of total isolation from all of life. It’s a place of torment. Often people talk as if they are falling, and it never stops. Maybe there is more than one place like this. We had two similar and terrible places that we called “Alone” and “Nothing”. They are sheer awfulness, and to even be threatened to be sent there, evoked great terror. Most Christian DID/SRA counselors know of this place. Sometimes parts are left there by evil beings, and they have to be rescued by Jesus. In addition, there are other dimensions with all sorts of characteristics that survivors talk about. (Some people call these dimensions “kingdoms”, as in underwater kingdoms, extraterrestrial kingdoms, etc.) Entire subsystems can live in these other dimensions and have no experience with our normal time/space reality. I experienced a lot of this. Without revelation from Holy Spirit these aspects of a person (both soul and spirit) are forever blocked from coming back into a person. The demonic realm holds them. The absolute terror of some of these places is beyond description. So, if you are a survivor and you have parts that can’t stop weeping, no matter what you do, or they seem to experience TOTAL AND COMPLETE isolation from all that exists, sometimes with a sense of falling through time and space, find a counselor who knows about outer darkness who can help you come back in full from other dimensions.
Now the bottom line. None of this is irreversible. None of this is forever. None of this is God’s plan. DID itself is a defense that allows physical and psychological survival when great evil comes in childhood. Survival is a minimal existence. God’s plan is abundant, joyful living in Him. Getting from the worst that life has to offer to abundant living in Him requires going to war against Satan. It requires incredible endurance, perseverance, persuading all the blocking parts that there is a better life ahead, and a great deal of courage. I write this to encourage those who are in the battle or need to be in the battle. God has victory on the other side. There are those who can walk with you, but they are pretty rare. I often hear “I can’t stand this one more minute”. Yet you live. So much of this is PLANNED to make you think you’re going to die. You can’t survive. Life can never be better. It’s all a lie. Life CAN be better – not quickly, but you can get there. Find someone to walk with you. Find good people who are infinitely patient, willing to learn with you, and absolutely led by Holy Spirit no matter what.
Most people who come to me are not willing to do the journey. They are not willing to persist, look at and believe their past, or except what God shows them. Sometimes heroic changes are needed, like moving across the country to escape being accessed. Sometimes all you need is a good counselor and a support network that is willing to learn. All good counselors know that there are times when you literally have to carry people for a time, being their faith and courage and strength until they can connect more with God. Most counselors that I know spend a huge amount of time on their face before God going, “God, we’re stuck! Help! What do we do now?????? Show us Lord how to move forward!” It’s a treacherous, horrible journey because great evil over many years was purposed to make you be in the state you’re in. Great good is needed to get you out. Nonetheless, DO THE WALK! NEVER GIVE UP! GOD HAS A WONDERFUL PLAN FOR YOUR LIFE! I’m here to walk with you, pray with you, and help you where I can.
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