Part 3 Dissociative Identity Disorder (D.I.D.)

Healing and Integration of Alters

(Alters are Also Known as Insiders)

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. Let’s investigate that latter danger more deeply.

The first person I ever knew who had Dissociative Identity Disorder – I’ll call her Samantha – had fled a dangerous cult to live interstate with a young woman I’ll 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 counsellor 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 father’s 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 counsellor 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 parent’s 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 counsellor (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 another’s 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 counsellor 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 host’s husband left her alone with all her outside children to raise all by herself. He told her, “You need too much.”

We don’t 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 don’t 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 counsellor, to look to a counsellor 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 don’t 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.

Next Part The Goal of Integration

© Copyright 2007, Grantley Morris. May be freely copied in whole or in part provided: it is not altered; this entire paragraph is included; readers are not charged and it is not used in a webpage. Many more compassionate, inspiring, sometimes hilarious writings available free online at www.net-burst.net Freely you have received, freely give. For use outside these limits, consult the author.